THERMAL ANALYSIS ON VARIABLE THICKNESS ABSORBER PLATE FIN IN FLATPLATE SOLAR COLLECTORS USING DIFFERENTIAL TRANSFORM METHOD

This article highlights a parametric investigation of the thermal analysis of variable thickness flat plate solar collector. Triangular profile of an absorber plate has been adopted from the point of view of saving in material. An approximate analytical model based on the Taylor series of expansion has been implemented for finding out the temperature distribution in the heat conduction direction of the absorber plate. Differential transform method (DTM) has been used to establish a new analytical formulation. The Modified Bessel’s function has been applied for the comparison of the results produced by DTM. The variation of several temperature dependent parameters is studied for knowing the dependency effect. The efficiency of absorber plate has been analysed as a function of Biot number and the impact of aspect ratio on the plate performance has been highlighted. The present analytical approach has ability to determine the thermal performance of an absorber plate under an actual design condition with a minor modification of the analysis. The formulation of the present work is also suitable for the analysis of any shape of an absorber plate in flat-plate solar collectors.