Solar flux density calculation for a heliostat with an elliptical Gaussian distribution source

•Solar flux formed by a focusing heliostat.•Elliptical Gaussian distribution.•Convolution based method.

The calculation of solar flux density is a key work for the design and optimization of solar tower system. Because of the great amount of calculation, the source distribution is often regarded as a radial distribution, which is not consistent with the reality. This paper presents a new method to calculate the flux density distribution by a focusing heliostat with an elliptical Gaussian distribution source. The two-dimensional convolution integration is proposed and converted into a one-dimensional integration. We use the Gauss-Legendre integration method to reduce the amount of calculation and accelerate the speed of integration. This method can be used to calculate the solar flux at image and receiver plane by most of the heliostat. It needs only 0.1% time of the ray tracing method for calculating the efficiency of the heliostat. It can be applied for design optimization of the solar heliostat field which is superior to the present methods in both accuracy and computation requirements.