Skip to main content
Article
An effective, low-cost mechanism for direct drag force measurement on solar concentrators
Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics (2011)
  • Jinny Rhee, San Jose State University
  • Chung Nguyen, San Jose State University
  • Michael Grace, San Jose State University
  • Aung Thu, San Jose State University
Abstract

An effective technique for measuring the drag force on a solar concentrator in a subsonic wind tunnel with a simply-fabricated, low-cost force sensing mechanism is described. The measurement uncertainty was reduced by ensuring operation near full scale of the load sensor employed, and by averaging a large number of samples to reduce chance variations due to turbulent fluctuations in the system. The resulting drag coefficients from our apparatus successfully duplicated previously published experimental data from a geometrically-similar, parabolic trough style solar collector.

Keywords
  • low cost mechanism,
  • solar concentrators
Disciplines
Publication Date
May, 2011
Publisher Statement
SJSU users: use the following link to login and access the article via SJSU databases
Citation Information
Jinny Rhee, Chung Nguyen, Michael Grace and Aung Thu. "An effective, low-cost mechanism for direct drag force measurement on solar concentrators" Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics Vol. 99 Iss. 5 (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jinny_rhee/6/