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Experimental and Theoretical investigation is presented to simulate the heat transfer in flat-plate single pass solar air collector working in forced convection. The complexity of the mathematical models of these phenomena has led researchers to conduct studies related to this field based on several simplifying assumptions, such as, the convective heat transfer coefficient is considered as constant. In this research work, initially, an experimental study is performed using thermocouples to measure temperature distributions on solar air heater components. The different measured temperatures of the absorber plate, air flow and bottom plate are used to determine the local convective heat transfer coefficients. Secondly, the problem is treated numerically by a developed FORTRAN code to calculate, for different solar radiation intensity, the temperature variations in each solar air panel components. Satisfactory qualitative and quantitative agreement is obtained between the numerical and experimental results.

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In this study, a mathematical model is developed for simulating the influence of fins and baffles on the thermal performance behavior of single pass solar air collector system working in forced convection. Due to the lack of theoretical work in the case of single pass solar air heaters having artificial roughness, we have proposed a theoretical model which consists of dividing the collector into several differential elements along the panel. This model is based on a numerical solution of energy equations in each component of collector. The results obtained from the present work and results of others researches are in good agreement. Using energy analysis, influence of parameters such as width of baffles, distance between baffles, length of air heater and number of fins are presented. The obtained results would be useful to select the most efficient and design parameters.