The objective of the Solar Concentrator Advanced Development Project is to develop the technology of solar collectors which would be used in a power generation system for the Space Station. The project is divided into three tasks: conceptual designs, detailed design of a concentrator and fabrication and testing of the concentrator. During conceptual design, three solar energy collection concepts were evaluated in detail: a Truss Hexagonal Panel reflector, a Splined Radial Panel reflector and a Domed Fresnel refractor. The Truss Hexagonal Panel reflector was selected as the best overall concentrator concept, primarily because of its technical soundness and design flexibility. The concentrator consists of 19 flat hexagonal panels mapped onto a spherical surface. Each panel contains 24 mirrored triangular facets which are individually focusable to provide the proper solar flux to the receiver cavity. Fabrication of the concentrator utilizes existing technology. The only significant areas to be addressed are the facet reflective and protective coating process and surface specularity requirements. Testing of the concentrator will center around optical performance and assembly alignment repeatability. This paper presents the candidate conceptual designs and trade study results, design details of the Truss Hexagonal Panel concentrator, as well as the planned fabrication process.
Solar concentrator advanced development project
Entwicklungsprojekt fuer den Sonnenstrahlungskonzentrator
1987
6 Seiten, 7 Bilder, 4 Tabellen, 4 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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