Study of the Thermal Field Upstream and Downstream of Two Heat Sources Placed in the Turbulent Flow of the Ambient Air Cooled through an Air-Ground Heat Exchanger

In order to more easily highlight the influence of cooled ambient air through an air-ground heat exchanger on the process of diffusion and mixing of heat around an electronic component and a photovoltaic solar module, we undertook to study the thermal field beforehand. The turbulent model has applied a realizable k-ε two equations model and the two-dimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are discretized with the second order upwind scheme. The SIMPLE algorithm, which is developed using control volumes, is adopted as the numerical procedure. Calculations were performed for a wide variation of the Reynolds numbers. Our results reveal, on the one hand, that the use of an air-ground heat exchanger accelerates the dispersion of the thermal field around the PV panel. On the other hand, with increasing Reynolds number, the instabilities appear in the wake zone, showing an oscillatory flow, also called von Karman Vortex Street. Our air-ground heat exchanger has an important influence on the diffusion process of the thermal field. Comparison of numerical results with the experimental data available in the literature is satisfactory.