Trapezoidal Approach to Establish One-Dimensional Analysis of an Absorber Plate for Two-Dimensional Heat Flow

Abstract

The thermal analysis of an absorber plate for flat-plate solar collectors is done by many investigators considering one-dimensional heat conduction. However there always exists a two-dimensional temperature distribution in the absorber plate due to its typical shape. The absorber plate is made of thin thickness and the temperature variation in the thickness direction may not occur. There is always a demand to establish an analytical analysis for two-dimensional heat flow in absorber plates. In this paper, a modified one-dimensional method is proposed to determine a 2-D analysis based on the trapezoidal rule. From the results, it can be emphasized that the modified 1-D model matches closely with the 2-D model. Therefore, the 1-D classical model is unsuitable to predict the performance of an absorber plate. The modified 1-D model is always better than the 1-D classical model. The analysis of the proposed 1-D model is very simple for understanding and calculations.