Solar Loads

Apply heat loads based on the sunbeam’s direction for thermal analysis

  1. In the Project Tree, click on a thermal analysis to open the Analysis Workbench, then select Thermal Steady-State.
  2. On the Analysis Workbench, click (Solar Loads).
    The Solar Loads dialog opens.
  3. For Sunbeam direction, enter values based on the global coordinate axis.
    Figure 1.


    In the modeling window, the direction of the sunbeam is denoted as a directional arrow in the triad.
    Figure 2.


  4. For Absorption coefficient, enter a value between 0.01 to 1.
    0.01 denotes the minimum solar flux and 1 denotes the maximum solar flux.
    Solar flux is applied to the complete model in the modeling window along the specified sunbeam direction. The maximum solar flux (when absorption coefficient is set to 1) is 1412.11 W/m2.1
  5. Click OK to create.
1 Advanced Solar-Distillation Systems (Basic principles, Thermal Modeling, and Its Application) by Tiwari. G.N; Sahota. L, 2017.