Analysis of Luminescent Solar Concentrator Performance Using a Ray Tracing Algorithm: Modelling, Optimization and Validation

Abstract

In this paper, the behaviour of a LSC doped with Near-Infrared Quantum Dots (NIR-QD) in an epoxy host material is modelled by a ray tracing algorithm under different iteration numbers. It is shown that by increasing the number of input rays in the system improving the accuracy of simulation and the QDs emission spectra. However, increasing the number of the rays has linearly increased simulation iterations, hence the simulation time. This challenge is overcome by optimizing the program by avoiding recalculations of parameters in the program which significantly reduces the volume of calculations; thus, simulation time. As a case in point, in a simulation run for 126000 rays, the simulation time was decreased from around 107 hours in the primary program to around only 3 hours in the optimized version. Furthermore, in the simulation for around 718000 rays, the optimized program achieved the simulation time of roughly 18 hours with higher accuracy . The ray-trace model predicted optical efficiency compared with references results to validate the model and found to be in an excellent agreement