Solar Heating Energy Balance

A complete reporting of the radiation energy balance is also provided in the Summary file when running Solar Heating. Below is a sample of such a report. Comments about the meaning of certain items are written below the line and are preceded by a “>>>>” symbol.

Simulation Time 1.728000e+003 seconds, year = 2006, month = 2, day = 1 hour = 12 minute = 25 second = 5

L2 Norm of residual before solve = 1.06209e-003

Radiosity Solution has converged

Iter=10 ResNorm = 6.36236E-014

CPU time to solve radiosity matrix = 4

Radiation heat balance = 4.1933e-010/ 86.259 = 4.8613e-010%

Radiation Heat Loads by Part ID:

ID	Radiation Heat Load (Watts)	Area (mm^2)	Surface Temperature (K)	Emissivity	Transmissivity
1	0.1875/ 0 solar	5959.3	298.43	0.7	0
2	0.19787/ 0 solar	5959.3	298.83	0.7	0
3	12.858/ 14.379 solar	1.56e+005	303.46	0.2	0.6
4	0.57946/ 0.51806 solar	5959.3	300.24	0.7	0
5	0.78074/ 0.69285 solar	5959.3	301.29	0.7	0
6	71.656/ 70.67 solar	1.21e+005	303.73	0.94	0
Total	86.259/ 86.259	3.01e+005	303.27

>>>> Part 3 is picking up 14.379 Watts through incoming solar flux, but its net increase is only 12.858. This means that this part lost about 1.5 Watts to its surroundings. Part 6, conversely, has a slightly higher net influx than it received from solar. This means that it picked up additional radiant energy from its surroundings. Note that the total solar heat load = total radiation heat load, indicating a good radiation energy balance.