A CFD study of wind loads on high aspect ratio ground-mounted solar panels

Computational fluid dynamics is used to study the wind loads on a high aspect ratio ground-mounted solar panel. The Reynolds- averaged Navier-Stokes simulations are performed using a commercial finite volume-based code with two di↵erent numerical approaches. First, the entire panel is directly simulated in a three-dimensional domain. Then the simulation of a small portion of the panel is carried out, im- posing periodic boundary conditions in the spanwise homogeneous direc- tion. The comparisons shows a good match between the results on the two models, both in terms of pressure coecient and in terms of aero- dynamic coecients. This demonstrates that it is possible to derive the aerodynamic behavior of a solar panel of considerable length from the study of a part of it, assuming that this is repeated in a periodic manner along the longitudinal direction. The main consequence is a considerable reduction of the computational cost and of the simulation time for a single CFD analysis