Impact of relative roughness height on the materialistic thermohydraulic performance of the multiple V-ribbed solar air heater

Abstract The current research deals with the computational characterization of the effect of Relative Roughness Height (RRH) on the materialistic Thermohydraulic (TH) performance of Multiple V-ribbed solar air heater. The rising applications of Solar Energy and the material selection in sustainable environmental development are helping the researchers to identify optimum utilization of solar energy. Useful heat gains (Qu), Mechanical power (Pm), Thermohydraulic parameter (Qu/Pm) are evaluated taking various variables and constants. The range of RRH (e/D) is taken between 0.019 and 0.043 (4 levels). The Effect of RRH on useful heat gain, pumping power and the TH parameters as a function of temperature rise parameter (TP). RRH and various values of TP (ΔT/I) and solar intensity (I) respectively are studied using MATLAB computational software. The results are plotted and it was observed that the rise in RRH values from 0.019 to 0.043 leads to remarkable increase in the values of useful heat gain and pumping power. Both the heat gain and the pumping power continuously increased with increase in RRH and have maximum value for 0.043. Also the output delivers the best and the worst combinations of designed as been concluded.