Mechanical Coupling Behavior of a Dish-Stirling Receiver: Influence on the Absorber Tube Stresses

The solar receiver tubes work under the highest temperatures and heat flux conditions, being their thermo-mechanical design critical to assure a safe and durable operation. Finite Element Analyses are traditionally utilized to assess the stresses for lifetime calculations. However, the real boundary conditions for these analyses are not well known yet. Thereby, this paper presents an experimental and numerical study to determine more realistic boundary conditions. Firstly, four deflection measurements are measured simultaneously by high-accuracy laser meters. Secondly, three types of boundary conditions are simulated trying to fit the experimental deflections: fixed, elastic and remote displacement. Finally, the stresses at critical regions are compared for each simulation. The results show that, unlike fixed support, remote displacement boundary conditions can obtain realistic deflection results but must be re-adjusted for each specific support, and elastic support fails to capture the manifold rotations. Using remote displacement stress results as reference for the case under study, fixed support leads to deviations in the stresses of at least 50% whilst elastic support can provide some similar stress results.