Alka Bharti
Department of Mechanical Engineering, MNNIT Allahabad
Bireswar Paul
Department of Mechanical Engineering, MNNIT Allahabad
In this study, a numerical simulation has been performed to study the stress and deflection caused due to the effect of circumferential temperature distribution in the receiver tube of a solar parabolic trough collector (PTC). The amount of heat flux is calculated using SolTrace software. A three-dimensional thermal analysis of the receiver tube has been done using Ansys Fluent software 14.0 to analyse the thermal behaviour of the receiver tube under given heat flux. After that, structural analysis has been performed to analyse the stress and deflection caused by the thermal loading and self-weight of the receiver tube. The maximum of 5.03 MPa tangential stress and -13.3 mm deflection has been obtained in the receiver tube.