HELIOS: a computational model for solar concentrators
The HELIOS computer code calculates the power concentrated by a field of individually guided heliostats and the resulting flux density (watts/cm/sup 2/) falling upon an arbitrary target grid. The problem has individual subroutines for each task in order to incorporate options for a variety of facet shapes, heliostat designs, field layouts, and tower-receiver apertures, and to facilitate additions and code improvements. HELIOS has been used extensively to analyze questions on safety, performance, design trade-offs, and tower protection engineering. Comparisons of HELIOS results with measurements have given good agreement. HELIOS calculates the ''sun position'' and uses it to establish alignment geometries. Atmospheric attenuation effects are included. Measured angular-distributions of incoming photons (sunshapes) and effects of aureole scattering are incorporated. Nondeterministic factors such as sun-tracking errors and facet-surface errors are described statistically and combined with the sunshape by numerical convolution. Shadowing and blocking are included. Several output choices are available, including graphical display of flux density distributions, of shadowing and blocking and of sunshape. Some of the modeling in HELIOS and samples of results are described.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia Labs., Albuquerque, N.Mex. (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EY-76-C-04-0789
- OSTI ID:
- 5385022
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-77-1185C; CONF-770850-1
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ERDA solar workshop on methods for optical analysis of central receiver systems, Houston, TX, USA, 9 Aug 1977
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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