Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Investigation on thermal performance calculation of two type solar air

collectors using artificial neural network
Murat Caner a,*, Engin Gedik b, Ali Keçebasß c
a
Department of Electrical Education, Faculty of Technical Education, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyon, Turkey
b
Department of Mechanical Education, Faculty of Technical Education, Karabuk University, Karabuk, Turkey
c
Department of Mechanical Education, Faculty of Technical Education, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyon, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: In this study, two types of solar air collectors are constructed and examined experimentally. The types are
Solar air collector called as zigzagged absorber surface type and flat absorber surface type called Model I and Model II
Thermal performance respectively. Experiments are carried out between 10.00 and 17.00 h in August and September under
ANN the prevailing weather conditions of Karabuk (city of the Turkey) for 5 days. Then, thermal performances
Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm
belongs to experimental systems are calculated by using data obtained from experiments. To estimate
thermal performances of solar air collectors an artificial neural network (ANN) model is designed. The
measured data and calculated performance values are used at the design of Levenberg–Marquardt
(LM) based multi-layer perceptron (MLP) in Matlab nftool module. Calculated values of thermal perfor-
mances are compared to predicted values. Statistical error analysis is used to evaluate results. Comparing
and statistical results demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed ANN. Also reliability of ANN and mean-
ingfulness of input variables are tested via applying stepwise regression method to the data used in
designing ANN.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction of the collector. Performance improvement can be achieved using

The key component of any solar energy systems is the solar col-
lector. Solar collectors are special kind of heat exchangers that trans-
form solar radiation energy to internal energy of the transport
medium. This is a device which absorbs the incoming solar radiation,
converts it into heat and transfers this heat to a fluid (usually air and
water) flowing through the collector. In generally solar collectors
separated into two sections with respect to type of heat transporter
fluid: one is liquid collector and the other is solar air collector.
Solar air collectors are main components in many engineering
applications, such as in building heating systems and in solar dry-
ing (Duffie & Beckman, 1991). Solar air collector converts sunlight
into heat extracted from the collector by moving fluid. Due to the
poor thermal conductivity and small heat capacity of air, the con-
vective heat-transfer rate inside the air flow channel where the air
is heated is low, and a great deal of effort has been made to in-
crease this rate (Williams, 1983). One of the effective ways to aug-
ment the convective heat transfer rate is to increase the heat-
transfer surface area and the turbulence inside the channel by
using fins or corrugated surfaces. Thermal performance of the solar
air collectors depends on the material, space, dimension and layout
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mcaner72@gmail.com (M. Caner).
diverse materials, various shapes and different dimensions and
layouts. Many studies have been carried out on this topic (Esen,
2007; Gedik, Kecebas, & Sait, 2008; Karim & Hawlader, 2006; Ucar
& Inalli, 2006).
The experimental studies and thermal performance analysis of
the solar collectors is too difficult due to various measurement
and heat transfer processes. In order to simplify this analysis and
avoid long series of collector performance tests, various studies
are carried out. Instance analytic computer codes are used for the
estimation of the performance of systems. The algorithms em-
ployed are usually complicated, involving the solution of complex
differential equations. These programs usually require large com-
puter power and need a considerable amount of time to give accu-
rate predictions. Instead of complex rules and mathematical
routines in classical methods, artificial neural networks used in
this study are able to learn the key information patterns within a
multi-dimensional information domain. ANN has been becoming
increasingly popular in thermal engineering applications during
the last decade. A number of studies have been introduced about
using ANN in thermal applications (Ertunc & Hosoz, 2006; Kalogi-
rou, 2001; Kalogirou, 2006; Mellita & Kalogirou, 2008; Sozen,
Arcaklioglu, Ozkaymak, 2005; Yang, Yeo, & Kim, 2003).
In this study the thermal performance of two different types of
solar air collectors, called Model I and Model II respectively, is
examined experimentally under prevailing weather conditions of

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.07.090
 M. Caner et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674
Karabuk in Turkey. Forty data are obtained from each experimental
system. Thus, totally 80 data are formed. Each of the data includes
eight parameters. But only three parameters are used to calculate
thermal performances. Then ANN models have been developed
by using measured and calculated data at experiments. Total data
is classified into three groups as training, validation and testing.
This ANN structure has eight input and one output variables, and
is a form of multi-layer perceptron (MLP) include single hidden
layer. Proposed MLP trained with Levenberg–Marquardt (LM)
learning algorithm is used to predict the thermal performances
of solar air collectors. Predicted and measured values of thermal
performances are compared. Comparing errors are evaluated via
statistical analysis according to model type and data groups. Pre-
diction errors are compared with stepwise regression analysis re-
sults, too.
2. Experimental study
Two different solar air collectors are constructed by using same
properties of materials. These models are called absorbing surface
model (Model I) and straight surface model (Model II) and they are
shown as schematically in Figs. 1 and 2 (Gedik, 2007). Experiments
are carried out between 10.00 and 17.00 h of August and Septem-
ber under Karabuk weather conditions (41.12° latitude. and 32.38°
longitude) and tests were carried out for 5 days. In both experi-
ments tilt of collector is 40°. During the experiments, the input
and output air temperatures of the heat exchanger, water temper-
atures in tanks, ambient temperature, surface temperature of col-
lectors and solar radiation density are measured.
Fig. 1. Schematic view of the air solar collector Model I.
Fig. 2. Schematic view of the air solar collector Model II.
1669
All temperature measurements are carried out by using Fe-con-
stant type thermocouple material which has an accuracy of ±%0.25.
Solar radiation density has been measured by using a pyrnometer
(Instruments haemmi messgerate solar 118). And its accuracy is
±%1.5. Forced circulation of air in the both systems is provided
by fans. An anemometer (0.5–40 m/s and accuracy of ±%2) is used
on the air velocity measurement. After both system collectors are
exposed to sun during the 30 min, constant air stream is given to
systems by fans.
3. Calculation of solar air collector performance
Calculation of the solar collector efficiency according to the first
law is defined as the ratio of the energy gain to the solar radiation
incident on the collector plane (Eq. (1)) (Karsli, 2007).
Q_
gI ¼ _ c ð1Þ
Qs
where Q_ c is the rate of heat transfer to a working fluid in the solar
collector, and Q_ s the solar energy absorbed by the solar collector
surface and is given in Eq. (2).
Q_ s ¼ IT ðsaÞAc ð2Þ
where IT is the rate of incidence of radiation per unit area of the
tilted collector surface, Ac the collector area, and sa the effective
product transmittance–absorptance. sa represents the fraction of
the solar radiation absorbed by the collectors and depends mainly
on the transmittance of the transparent covers and on the absor-
bance of the absorbent. The effective product transmittance–
absorptance can be evaluated by using Eq. (3).
sa
ðsaÞ ¼ qG ð3Þ
1  ð1  aÞ
Eq. (1) is the results of a first law analysis of flat plate solar col-
lectors because all energy fluxes are treated equally, regardless of
their potential usefulness.
The absorption heat-transfer rate by the solar collectors, Q_ c , can
be estimated by using Eq. (4).
Q_ c ¼ m
_ a cpa ðT a;out  T a;in Þ ð4Þ
4. Artificial neural networks
ANN’s are computational model, which are based on the infor-
mation processing system of the human brain. In general they
are composed of three layers, which are an input layer, some hid-
den layers and an output layer. This network structure is called
MLP as well (Iseri & Karlik, 2009). Each layer has a certain number
of small individual and highly interconnected processing elements
called neurons or nodes. The neurons are connected to each other
by communication links that are associated with connection
weights. Signals are passed through neurons over the connection
weights. Each neuron receives multiple inputs from other neurons
in proportion to their connection weights, and subjects them acti-
vation functions, and generates a single output signal which may
be propagated to other neurons (Kurt, Atik, Ozkaymak, & Recebli,
2008). Thus neurons process these input data and feeds forward
to the next layer.
Pureline function, logsig function and tansig function are the
three kind most commonly used transfer functions. The appropri-
ate choice of the function can be conducted by considering influ-
encing factors such as the degree of complexity of the problem,
the node numbers of the training group, and the biasing and
weight of the net to obtain the most rapid convergence (Yuhong
& Wenxin, 2009).
1670 M. Caner et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674
To develop an ANN model, there must be three stages. Firstly,
input and output data is chosen as vectors. There must be good
relation among these data. That is, output data must influenced
by changing input variables. The number of neurons in the input
and output layers is determined according to the number of input
and output variable.
Secondly, the network is trained to predict an output based on
input data in the training stage. Validation vectors are used to
overcome overtraining problem in this stage. Some part of the
whole training data is put aside for the purpose of validation and
not used in training. During the training process validation error
is calculated with training error after each training epoch. When
the ANN begins to overtrain, the validation error will rise although
the training error decreases. If the validation error continuous ris-
ing for a specified number of epochs, the training process is
stopped and the ANN parameters at the minimum validation error
point are returned (Suzuki, Ovaska, Furuhashi, Roy, & Dote, 2000).
The back propagation (BP) network is the most commonly used as
learning algorithm and the initial connection weights of the nodes
change during the training process to minimize the overall net-
work error. With the fault of easily being trapped in local minima,
and also because of the slow convergence rate, the BP network is
only suitable for those problems which require superior stability
and accuracy. The LM method is a modification of the classic New-
ton algorithm for finding the optimum solution to a minimization
problem, and is often characterized as more stable and efficient
than a BP algorithm, except that a larger memory space is needed.
With the development of high speed computer technology, these
shortcomings of the LM method are no longer the trouble. So LM
network was adopted here to reduce the time of learning, and also
to increase the rate of searching (Yuhong & Wenxin, 2009). During
practical application, the number of hidden layers can be one or
two. Number of neurons in the hidden layer/layers is mostly deter-
mined via trial and error method. But an estimating method is used
in the study of (Kurt et al., 2008) for calculation the number of hid-
den layer. Determining of optimal number of hidden layer and the
number of neurons in layer/layers are important structural prob-
lems of MLP. ANN toolkits of some programs such as SPSS have
ability to search the optimal number via inputting a maximum
number using trial and error method. To finish training process a
few performance criteria are designated according to training algo-
rithm. When the training parameters reached one of them training
is stop. Such as the network training process is stopped when the
testing error is within a desired tolerance (Kurt et al., 2008). The
algorithm used in training ANN and the type of activation function
used at the output of the neuron are the mathematical differences.
Activation functions involve exponential functions and thus non-
linear modeling can be achieved (Yilmaz & Atik, 2007).
Finally, in the testing stage, the network is tested. Predicting
output data are obtained via using input data that are not used
for training stage. If experimentally obtained predicting data is ex-
isted, they are compared with one another. If the results are not
satisfactory network is retrained. If the test results are good en-
ough training parameters is saved. At the end of testing stage, cal-
culation different measures of error are used to show the
effectiveness of the well trained network.
5. Application of the ANN on the experimental data
In this study, first we take a number of data set that can have an
effect on the thermal performance of the solar air collector.
The three layers network structure is shown in Fig. 3. Six input
variables are input and output of collector temperatures (Tin, Tout),
solar radiation intensity (I), stored water (Tsw), ambient and surface
temperatures (Tamb, Ts) of collector. These six variables are ob-
Model
number
Data time
Tout
Tin
η
Tsw
Tamb
I
Ts
Input Layer Hidden Layer Output Layer
Fig. 3. The architecture of ANN used for this study.
tained from experimental studies. Eight input variables are ob-
tained via addition of model number and measuring time of data.
Air flow velocity is not used as input variable because of its varia-
tion is quite small. One output variable is performance of solar air
collector (g).
Total data consists of 80 samples is obtained from two experi-
mental collector model. Half of them belong to Model I and other
half with same time input data is obtained from Model II. Using
model number input variables as 1 or 2 the data of both models
was combined.
Aim of the network is to predict performance of the solar air
collector using data of input variables. To solve this problem; the
network is trained by using Matlab neural networks module
(nftool). Totally, 80% of this data is used for training, 10% is used
for cross validation and 10% is used for testing. The data for each
class are chosen uniformly from the total data set.
Number of neuron in hidden layer is chosen as twenty in this
study. This number is obtained via trial and error. Because of the
nftool nature hyperbolic tansig function f(x) = 1/(1 + exp(x)) is ap-
plied for the hidden layer, and the linear transfer function (purelin)
is used in the output layer. Input data is applied after normaliza-
tion process between 1 and +1.
Thus MLP with the neuron numbers (8, 20, 1) is set up in this
paper. It is most widely used type of neural network.
In the network, we used LM back propagation function. This
function is a network training function that updates weight and
bias values according to LM optimization method (Iseri & Karlik,
2009).
Training parameters used in trainlm algorithm are shown below
with their values:
Fig. 4. Values of MSE and R according to data groups.
 M. Caner et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674 1671

Fig. 5. Regression analysis with training, validation, test and all data.

Epochs between displays 25

Maximum number of epochs to train 1000
Maximum time to train in seconds Inf
Performance goal 0
Maximum validation failures 6
Factor to use for memory/speed Tradeoff 1
Minimum gradient error 1e10
Initial l 1e3
l decrease factor 0.1
l increase factor 10
Maximum l 1e10

The network was trained for eight epochs with LM back propaga-
tion function and showed the following error results and correlation
coefficients as it can be seen in Fig. 4. The mean square error of
training phase is 5.42683e6, cross validation phase is 2.00269e5
and testing phase is 7.44013e6.
In Fig. 5, the dashed line is the perfect fit line where outputs and
targets are equal to each other. The circles are the data points and
colored line represents the best fit between outputs and targets.
Here it is important to note that circles gather across the dashed Fig. 6. Variation of the gradient error, l and validation error.
line, so our outputs are not far from their targets. According to
these results we can say that used MLP structure of ANN is very
And the difference of both values is shown as bar chart in Fig. 8.
well to predict performance of the two type solar air collectors.
Red bars refer to Model I and blue bars refer to Model II.1
Variation of the gradient error, value of l and validation error
The mean absolute error (MAE) value is a linear score which
are shown in Fig. 6. Also stopping of training process is shown
means that all the individual differences are weighted equally in
due to reaching minimum gradient error at epoch 8.
the average. Absolute error is the absolute value of the difference
between target values and outputs. Mean absolute error of the pro-
6. Result and discussions
posed MLP is found as 0.9879.

The comparison between real (target) and estimated (output)

thermal performances are shown in the Fig. 7. The first half of 1
For interpretation of color in Figs. 4–11, the reader is referred to the web version
the data belongs to model I and the other belongs to model II. of this article.
1672 M. Caner et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674

1.4

Experimental data
1.2
Estimated data

thermal performance
0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

-0.2
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
samples

Fig. 7. Comparison between experimental and estimated thermal performances.

0.06 reliability of model. The more the value of R-square is the more
the reliability of model is. Over fitting may also increase the value
0.04 of R-square. Adjusted R-square is calculated after removing outliers
from model hence is more reliable. Therefore value of adjusted R-
square is used for comparing.
0.02
The statistical coefficient of multiple determinations is com-
puted according to Eq. (7). The value of proposed network is found
0 as 0.997.
error

SSE
-0.02 R2 ¼ 1  Pn 2 ð7Þ
i¼1 oi

-0.04
To determine the effectiveness of the proposed network step-
wise regression analysis is applied using experimentally obtained
-0.06
total data. Results of this analysis are shown in Fig. 9. Here, we
can see the meaningfulness degrees of input variables. This degree
-0.08
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
of meaningfulness is determined via being value of p-val below 0.5.
samples Thus meaningfulness ranking of input variables is determined as 4,
3, 7, 8 and 1. That is, it is possible to predict performance value of
Fig. 8. Bar chart of individual errors. the solar air collectors with using these meaningful variables only.
And results of RMSE and R-square values are compared with pro-
The RMSE is a quadratic scoring rule which measures the aver- posed MLP in Table 1. It is shown that error results of the ANN pre-
age magnitude of the error. Root mean square of the error (RMSE) diction are very good according to stepwise regression method.
is computed via Eqs. (5) and (6). Where di is the desired or actual The individual relative errors are computed with Eq. (8) and
value, oi is the network output or predicted value, n is the number shown as a bar chart in Fig. 10. It is seen that most of the relative
of output data (Kurt et al., 2008). According to this equation RMSE errors are between 5% and +5%, and most of them smaller than
value of the proposed network is found as 1.73%. The RMSE will al- 2%. Normalized values are used at computing relative error values.
ways be larger or equal to the MAE; the greater difference between Because of a few actual performance values are zero, there is a
them, the greater the variance in the individual errors in the sam- infinitive problem to computing relative errors of MLP. To over-
ple. The MAE and the RMSE can be used together to diagnose the come this infinitive problem normalized input and output values
variation in the errors in a set of forecasts. Both the MAE and RMSE are used to find relative errors or MLP.
are negatively-oriented scores. That is, lower values are better.
n  
1X jdi  oi j
X
n MRE ð%Þ ¼ 100  ð8Þ
n i¼1 di
SSE ¼ ðdi  oi Þ2 ð5Þ
i¼1
 1=2 The histogram of the errors is shown in Fig. 11. As it is seen,
SSE
%RMSE ¼  100 ð6Þ over the 45% of the errors accumulate across between 4 and +1.
n
That shows our network works very well.
R-square which is also known as coefficient of determination in Because of the total data is obtained via combining the data of
statistical language it is an indicator of how well chosen factors are Model I and Model II we can achieve error analysis based on the
explaining the result. You can also treat R-square as a measure of model. Model based error analysis results are shown in Table 2.
 M. Caner et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1668–1674 1673

Fig. 9. Results of stepwise regression analysis.

Table 1 50
Comparison of stepwise regression and proposed MLP.
45
RMSE (%) R2
Stepwise regression 6.49 0.875 40
Proposed MLP 1.73 0.997
35

30
samples

25
25

20
20

15
15

10
10
relative error

5
5

0
0
-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
-5
% error
-10
Fig. 11. Histogram of errors in proposed MLP.

-15

-20
Table 2
Comparison of model based error analysis results.
-25
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
MAE SSE RMSE (%) R2 MRE
samples
Model 1 (first 40 sample) 0.9204 0.0112 1.67 0.9984 2.5549
Fig. 10. Relative individual errors of total data. Model 2 (other 40 sample) 1.0554 0.0127 1.78 0.9994 3.5793
Total data (80 sample) 0.9879 0.0239 1.73 0.9967 3.0671

According to the results although both models are very reliable

Model II has a bit more error than Model I.
7. Conclusions
The artificial neural network (ANN) model using LM learning
algorithm was successfully used to predict the complex nonlinear
relationship between the thermal performance and input variables
of two type solar air collectors. The comparisons between the pre-
dicted data and experimental data proved MLP model has a capa-
bility of recognizing the underlying relationship between input
and output events. Also statistical error analysis proved reliability
and accuracy of the MLP model.
Due to difficulties of the experimental studies, numbers of the
obtained experimental data can be restricted. Interpolation data
which apart from the experimental data can be used with proposed
trained MLP to obtain collector performance.
Also according to the result of the stepwise regression analysis,
some of the input variables are shown as meaningless for comput-
ing collector performance. Designing a new MLP structure to pre-
dict air collector performances by using meaningful input
variables can only be thought of as further study.
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