Parameters optimization of the dust absorbing structure for photovoltaic panel cleaning robot based on orthogonal experiment method

Abstract

Dust accumulation on the photovoltaic (PV) panels is one of the important factors that influence the PV power generation efficiency. Autonomous robot is one of the promising way to clean the PV panels effectively, in which the absorbing flow rate to a large extent determines the cleaning performance and usage effectiveness of power supply. In this paper, the air-solid two-phase flow control equations for the dust absorbing process, the mechanical behavior of the dust particles and the relationship between the pressure distribution and the dust particle velocity are analyzed theoretically for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. Orthogonal experiment method is employed to optimize the structure parameters for suction inlet of PV panel cleaning robots. The suction inlet height, inlet width, outlet height, outlet width and necking radius are simplified as 16 sets of typical test optimization problem. The fluid calculation software ANSYS Fluent is adopted to execute the simulation. The optimal result is that the inlet width is 650 mm, the inlet height is 6 mm, the outlet width is 175 mm, the outlet height is 100 mm and the necking radius is 350 mm. Experiment based on the optimized structural parameters was carried out, which implies the compatibility with the simulating result. And the average wind speed at the suction inlet is 41.8 m/s, which verifies the structure optimization.