Investigation of Flow Induced Structural and Acoustic Behaviour of a Flat Solar Panel Mounted on a Mini Bus Roof Top

External fitting of a flat solar panel on a vehicle at its roof top changes the aerodynamics of flow around it. A local variation of pressure and velocity parameters around the solar panel at increasing speed and yaw angle may lead to structural instability and acoustic performance deterioration of the vehicle. Present paper addresses this issue numerically using ANSYS Fluent software. The investigation consists of three steps - flow analysis, structural analysis and acoustic analysis which focus more on flat solar panel and its supporting pillars. The vehicle speed is varied up to 100 kmph and yaw angle varied from 0° to 18°. The flow analysis reports pressure and velocity distribution, Structural analysis shows the deformation and stresses induced in panel and supporting pillars and Acoustic analysis captures the change in overall sound pressure level (OASPL) at front and rear location of the vehicle. The result of investigation shows no significant effect of flow induced effect on solar panel structure. Change in OASPL at front and rear end is observed to be marginal only.