International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 7, Issue 9, September 2017) 575 CFD Analysis of Solar Air Heater Having Corrugated Absorber Plate Dr. Ashwini Kumar 1 , Abhijit Mahato 2 , Dr. Aruna Kumar Behura 3 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Professor (Assistant), H.S.B.P.V.T. Group of Institutions-College of Engineering, Kasthi, Ahmed Nagar, Maharashtra - 414701, India. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Assistant Professor, Abacus Institute of Technology- 712148, Kolkata, India. 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Associate Professor, Poornima Foundation, Jaipur, India Abstract:-- A CFD analysis is conducted through different turbulence models to study the performance of a solar air heater using corrugated absorber plate. A modern CFD code ANSYS FLUENT v 14.5 is used to simulate fluid flow and heat transfer through the solar air heater. Flow is assumed to be two-dimensional and the heat flux is considered at a constant value of 910 W/m 2 . The present work show that the Renormalization-group k-epsilon model provides the results close to those, worked out from available empirical co-relation for two-dimensional steady flow solar air heaters. Keywords: - CFD Analysis; Absorber plate; Solar air heaters; Nusselt number; Reynolds number. Nomenclature D h hydraulic diameter of duct, mm P h wetted perimeter, mm A cross-sectional area, m 2 h heat transfer coefficient, W/m 2 K k thermal conductivity of air, W/mK L1 inlet length of duct, mm L2 test length of duct, mm L3 outlet length of duct, mm H depth of duct, mm W width of duct, mm m mass flow rate, kg/s Dimensionless parameters f friction factor f c friction factor of corrugated absorber plate f s friction factor of smooth absorber plate   Nusselt number N uc Nusselt number of corrugated absorber plate N us Nusselt number of smooth absorber plate Pr Prandtl number   Reynolds number W/H Duct aspect ratio I. INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE SURVEY Solar energy is the major source of non-conventional energy but is used in very small proportion (approx 2%) compared to other sources of energy. Solar air heater consists of an absorber plate to capture insolation (incident solar radiation) and transfers thermal energy to the air by heat transfer. The thermal efficiency of a solar air heater having smooth absorber plate collector is low due to very low convective heat transfer coefficient between the absorber plate and the air which is flowing in the duct. The use of artificial roughness or corrugation on flow side of absorber plate is a very effective way to enhance the heat transfer to the flowing air in the duct but some pressure drop is occurred due to that. Solar air heaters are now widely used in many areas, such as, drying of agricultural products, seasoning of timber, space heating. Many researchers worked on solar air heater to enhance thermo- hydraulic performance. Bhagoria et al. [1] performed experiments to find out the effect of relative roughness pitch and height respectively on the heat transfer and friction factor in a solar air heater with wedge shaped rib roughness and found maximum enhancement of Nusselt number is up to 2.4 times whereas the friction factor increased by 5.3 times for the investigated range of parameters. Karim and Hawladar [2] and Karim et al. [3] experimentally found that the v-corrugated collector has superior thermal performance compare to flat plate collector. Lin et al. [4] found that cross-corrugated solar air-heaters have a better thermal performance than the flat- plate collector. Saini and Saini [5] from their performed experiments found 3.8 times enhancement in Nusselt number and1.75 times enhancement in friction factor in duct having transverse ribs.Vishavjeet et al. [6] discussed that CFD analysis is now very important for the study of flow behaviour and various performance characteristics of solar air heater and it will be carried out to find optimum roughness parameters.