ABSTRACT:
This report presents a description of a computer program for the simulation of the Solar Thermal Test Facility (STTF) and an experiment run at that facility. The STTF is a general-purpose solar test facility with subsystems designed to provide solar thermal energy to a variety of experiments. The basic facility consists of (a) a relocatable heliostat field, (b) a tower for mounting experiments, water and electrical resources, (c) a cooling tower, (d) a computerized control system, (e) a data acquisition system, and (f) provisions for experiments. The simulation program structure contains equivalent computer modules for each of the STTF subsystems and experiments which permit rapid simulation of the experiments or new facility configurations under differing environmental and test conditions.