Durability Analysis on Solar Energy Converters Containing Polymeric Materials

J. Wirth, S. Jack, M. Köhl, and K.-A. Weiß
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Freiburg, Germany
Published in 2008

The key issues of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems are research and development of solar technologies for the fast growing market of solar energy. This paper presents examples of the usage of COMSOL Multiphysics: The ingress of water is a serious reason for the degradation of photovoltaic modules which can hardly be measured using experimental approaches yet. Therefore, a modeling approach was used regarding the water ingress under different climatic conditions as well as variations of the design of the PV module.  Further on, the issues of efficiency, thermo-mechanical and external loads of polymer solar thermal flat plate collectors have been examined.

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