ABSTRACT
This work presents the considerations and results of thermofluid characteristics of air
flow over an inclined heated flat plate with particular reference to solar collector. The
study is motivated by the need to better understanding of heat transfer from the top
surface of flat-plate solar energy collectors. The effects of angle of attack, heat flux and
Reynolds number are experimentally and numerically investigated. The plate was fixed
in the test section with a special mechanism have a capability of changing the angle of
attack. A finite volume descretization method using body-fitted coordinates and
SIMPLE-based solution algorithm are applied with a segregated solver. The momentum
and energy equations were solved by the second order upwind scheme. The fluid flow
and heat transfer over the inclined flat plate are treated using k-ε RNG turbulent model.
The model results are validated with the experimental results at the same particular
conditions. The validated CFD model was extended to obtain the performance of a wide
range of angle of attack and flow rate. The local distributions of the velocity, pressure
and turbulence with different angle of attack are presented.