Created in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.

Parasol and Solar Irradiation

This Application is licensed under the COMSOL Application License 5.2.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. See www.comsol.com/trademarks.

About Parasol and Solar Irradiation

This app simulates the solar irradiation on a beach with frosty beverage cans enclosed in
two coolers under a parasol. The study ranges from 10 to 20 hours by default. The user
can edit the start and end time. Depending on the location on Earth and daytime moment
in the year, the parasol shadows the coolers at a determined angle, affecting the solar
irradiation and hence the coolers temperature profiles in time. These parameters are easily
set in the application interface before computation.
The purpose of this app is to demonstrate how solar irradiation can be taken into account
in heat transfer applications. A typical modification of this app would be to replace the
parasol and coolers with a building to account for solar irradiation in a climate control
model of the building.
The figure below shows the application interface with legends for the different options.
Ribbon
Operating
conditions
Location on Earth
(coordinates or
built-in list of cities)
Simulation time

Computation
settings and
information

Results

The ribbon contains six action buttons:

Reset to DefaultReset the input parameters and solver tolerance to their default values
ComputeCompute and update the solution for the defined input parameters
Animate TemperatureLaunch the animation of the temperature plot in the simulation
period
Animate IrradiationLaunch the animation of the irradiation plot in the simulation
period

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PARASOL AND SOLAR IRRADIATION

 Open PDF DocumentationOpen the documentation

Create ReportGenerate and display a report
To specify the location on Earth, either geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude)
or built-in cities can be entered. Results may be analyzed for a given day between January
1st, 1900 and December 31st, 2100.
In the Computation section, you can set the solver tolerance and read various information
on the state of the solutioncomputed, unavailable, needing updateand the expected
computation costs.
After computation, the result plots are displayed in the bottom-right graphics windows.
The graph on the left shows the temperature field. The graph on the right plots the solar
irradiation, showing the shading effects of the parasol. Below the graphic plots, a slider lets
you choose the time step to display in the simulation time interval. In the Temperature
Monitoring window, the temperature in each cooler is displayed at noon, at the end of the
simulation, and at the time step specified in the slider. You can check the temperature
evolution over the whole simulation in the right plot.

The Embedded Model

MODEL DEFINITION

A system of a parasol and two coolers is modeled. The coolers, made of Styrofoam, each
contain six beverage cans. The parasol provides shade but otherwise has no significant
thermal effect on the beverage temperature. The primary source of heat in this model is
the solar irradiation.
The ambient temperature follows a simple 24 hour periodic sinusoidal model around an
average temperature:
t 14
T amb = T avg + T cos 2 --------------
24
Here, Tavg and T are two customizable parameters corresponding to the average
temperature and diurnal temperature variation, respectively. The time variable t is
expressed in hours.
For a more detailed description of the model behind this app, including step-by-step
instructions showing how to build it, see Suns Radiation Effect on Two Coolers Placed
Under a Parasol.

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PARASOL AND SOLAR IRRADIATION

RESULTS

The following plots are available after running the simulation on the right side of the
interface:
Temperature change in the coolers over time
Temperature field on the geometry surface
External irradiation

Application Library path: Heat_Transfer_Module/Applications/

parasol_and_solar_irradiation

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PARASOL AND SOLAR IRRADIATION