The investigation of a solar collector is based on the thermal behaviour of a carrier fluid and the degradation of energy across a flat plate collector. The exergy analysis of a thermal system includes the change in the exergy function of a carrier fluid while transferring solar radiation across an air gap. The cell cast acrylic glass was used to transmit the incident solar radiation to the absorber plate, and to safeguard the absorber plate from the outside environment. With the help of the steady flow energy equation, the enthalpy of the carrier fluid (moist air) was calculated. The specific humidity of the incoming air was calculated at an average dry bulb temperature of 299.4 K. The stagnation temperature at a limiting condition was also estimated to find out the maximum permissible limit for a given thermal design. The mass flow rate of air was assumed to be 5.2 g-s−1. The efficiency of the solar collector was found to vary from 40 to 42%, whereas the thermal energy available for drying was 15–59% of the exergy of the carrier fluid. The net entropy generation rate due to the collector plate was calculated to be 0.12 W-K−1.

In today’s world of growing competition, all industries are trying their best to give the components of high quality with minimum expenditure. So in present work a new semi-elliptical boom has been selected to replace the conventional boom, which is usually made of rectangular. In particular, the study wants to substitute the rectangular section for Semi-elliptical section. This change lightens the weight of the boom. For this purpose, boom with semi-elliptical cross-section has been modeled using cad software pro/E wildfire 4.0. Using VB program automatic calculation module (UPAS), the static force at different working condition of the boom calculated. Then Finite element analysis has been done to determine the static stress at a given load condition using software ANSYS 12. The result shows that total weight is reduced by 5%. The value of maximum stress and displacement is 115.663MPa and 12.885 mm respectively. Thus the structure is capable of withstanding the maximum stress. The structure is failsafe. In this paper only static stress analysis is done.

Solar air collector is one of the main components of a solar dryer unit, which supplies the conditioned air for processing the perishable edible items. Various techniques have been employed to improve the thermal efficiency of the collector system, such as extended surfaces, packed beds, artificial roughness, etc., however, the cost of construction is higher. Therefore, this study was focussed on the collector efficiency enhancement using a chimney without applying the aforementioned. A single-pass solar air collector coupled with drying chamber and chimney was utilized for the experiments. The experiments were conducted in September. The average values of the solar radiation intensity, ambient temperature, temperatures inside the dryer, collector efficiency were graphically presented. The experimental data reported the maximum values of the outlet temperatures for the solar air collector with and without a chimney to be 52.8 °C and 57 °C, respectively. The collector thermal efficiency with and without the chimney was found to vary from 29.6% to 64.8% and from 26.9% to 44.8%, respectively. Furthermore, it was noticed that, with the chimney, the temperature inside the dryer showed uniform tendency.

In manufacturing industry investors are always looking for economical and safe designs to cope up with the increasing demands of competitive markets. Keeping this objective in mind, arm of CE125 face shovel hydraulic excavator was re-designed to decrease manufacturing cost by reducing weight while keeping the stress approximately same as was used in the conventional design. For this purpose Pro/EngineerTM was used to generate Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) where cross section and inner structure of the design were kept to be semi-elliptical which helped to decrease the weight of the arm significantly. Initial stress analysis was also done in the same CAD software as it is quick and optimization can be done quickly. However sometimes it does not give accurate results because of poor meshing, so final analysis was done in AnsysTM. Analysis in AnsysTM calculated the stress to be 114 MPa while displacement came out to be 3.8 mm. Comparison of two models showed that the weight of new design is 5.1% less than the conventional one.

The article investigates the thermal behaviour of a solar collector retrofitted with a natural draught unit. The objective of this work is to draw a comparative line between a system that is equipped with a circular vertical channel and the conventional one. The effectiveness of the solar heating system and how to further improve the prevailing system are examined in this study. The flat plate solar collector was used to assess the dynamics of the system. The Hottel–Whillier–Bliss equation was used to obtain the useful heat gain rate. The instantaneous collector efficiency was reduced by 22.84%. The net heat loss encountered with natural draught was augmented by 10.89%. The net pressure drop along the length of the collector was increased when a solar collector related to the circular chimney. The stagnant temperature of the collector with the natural draught was decreased by 3.20%. The heat loss to the surrounding was computed to be 33.94% of the net energy received by a solar collector connected with the circular stack. The Fanning friction factor for airflow was reduced in the system equipped with natural draught. The static pressure was marginally dropped at the inlet, whereas it was steeply increased at the outlet of the solar collector. The static pressure would be the same for both systems at collector length l = 0.84 m. The inference can be deducted from the comparative analysis that the air stream flow behind the collector plate and could provide better prospects for a collector unit equipped with natural draught at the exhaust end of the solar dryer.