Abstract
This study proposes parabolic dish-based, toroidal-structured fractal solar collectors. The potential of fractal geometry to increase heat transfer and the ability of the parabolic dish to concentrate solar rays form the basis of the proposed design for increasing efficiency. In this study, the thermal and hydrodynamic behaviors of the proposed 3-row, 4-row, and 5-row parabolic collectors were investigated comprehensively. Using theoretical modeling and experimental results, the performances of the proposed parabolic dish-based toroidal fractal solar collectors were evaluated and compared via numerical simulation methods. After the experimental studies of the 3-row toroidal fractal collector, the analysis studies were completed using the ANSYS-Fluent program. Then, simulations were carried out for other toroidal solar collectors using the results of these experimental studies. As a result of the converging numerical analyses, the radiative, hydrodynamic, and thermal analysis results of the toroidal absorbers in 3-row, 4-row, and 5-row structures integrated with the parabolic dish were compared. In the temperature distribution analysis, it was observed that the parabolic dish effectively focuses on the sun rays and provides a gradual temperature increase of approximately 21 K for the fractal collector. It is observed that 96.84% convergence was achieved between the experimental and numerical results.