Thermal stress variation in a solar central receiver during daily operation

Abstract

Receivers from solar power plants are subject to highly complex thermal loads that are very difficult to measure experimentally. The analysis of a complete receiver from one of those plants involves a great number of panels and tubes, increasing the complexity and the computational cost. In this work, a solar receiver has been studied during its daily operation time with a method that only considers one representative tube per panel, which reduces the computational time. Results show that the maximum stress is always located in the northern panels, where the circumferential temperature gradient is higher. Thus, stress has a high dependence on the circumferential temperature variation, and then, the most loaded panel could be found studying those temperature gradients.