IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308 _______________________________________________________________________________________ Volume: 03 Issue: 06 | Jun-2014, Available @ http://www.ijret.org 36 SIMULATION OF SOLAR INTENSITY IN PERFORMANCE OF FLAT PLATE COLLECTOR A.Ponshanmugakumar 1 , A. Aldrich Vincent 2 Abstract Solar collectors behave differently at different radiations and temperatures. The system consists of solar thermal collectors, a storage and circulation pump of water to carry the heat to its applications. The results of the simulations show that, the efficiency of flat plate collectors can be used for domestic purposes in Tamil Nadu at different geographic locations by adjusting the characteristics of system components to obtain results. It also helps in determining the location which generates optimum solar energy. This study intends to focus on the performance of flat plate collectors in a simulation environment using TRNSYS and solar radiation data collected for 7 stations in Tamil Nadu Keywords: Flat Plate Collector (FPC), TRNSYS, Solar Intensity ---------------------------------------------------------------------***------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. INTRODUCTION In the recent years the energy production is the major problem. Their cost and the pollution while consuming fossil fuels. The depreciation of fuels is also a major frightening issue. But fossil fuels are the most commonly used and depend fuels. So in order to reduce the problem the rulers has encouraging for the alternative energy sources. It is most commonly called as renewable energy sources and it has no pollution, regenerative type and also safe generation of power. Among all the alternative energy sources solar energy has a high impact on energy production 1.1 Solar Radiation The spectrum of electromagnetic wave radiation produced by sun is solar radiation. The earth’s atmosphere deflects or filters the majority of the sun’s damaging radiation. About part of the radiation is in the observable short-wave division of the electromagnetic range. The other half is mostly in the infrared part, with some in the ultraviolet. 1.2 Characteristics of Solar Radiation The part of solar radiation is intercepted by the earth’s outer atmosphere. The statistical relation formulated between the daily duration of sunshine N and the daily total global solar radiation G is of the form,    ࢕  =  + ૚− ࢔   (1.1) Where, Go is the daily global solar radiation with cloud free atmosphere, ‘a’ is mean proportion of radiation on an entirely overcast day, and N; maximum period of sunshine. Due to the difficulties in the defined estimation of Go in the above equation, Go was replaced by the celestial radiation (ECR), it is given by,  ܩ ܧ  =  +     (1.2) 1.3 Flat Plate Collectors The flat plate collectors ar5e most commonly used in the domestic hot water system on the roof tops. They consist of a black coated absorber, a transparent acrylic cover that reduces heat losses, a heat transfer fluid to extract heat from the absorber, and a heat insulating packing. In water heat panels, fluid is usually circulated through tubes to transfer heat from the absorber to an insulated storage tank. This may be achieved directly or through a heat exchanger. Fig 1 Flat plate collectors Hilmer et al. 1999 presented a method to calculate numerically the solar collector with varying parameters [1]. Zuefa and Magiera 2001 published an experimental study in the more uniform for the flow distribution, the higher the collector efficiency. But uniform flow distributions are not possible in solar collectors [2]. Fan et al. 2007 investigated both experimentally and theoretically the finned tube flat plate collector. They analyzed numerically by CFD and got results which oriented with experiment results [3]. Augustus and Kumar 2006 developed mathematical model for an unglazed perforated flat plate collector. They developed an empirical relation for various components. They proved the improved results of absorptivity, heat transfer and air flow rate[4]. Molero et al. 2009 presented a