Heliostats represent a significant proportion of the cost of central tower concentrating solar power systems; hence, there is a need to reduce the cost of these. One of the challenges faced in doing this is to ensure that any new design is still able to cope with the loads imposed upon it, particularly the aerodynamic loads. Numerous studies have reported the aerodynamic loadings encountered by heliostats for multiple operational conditions. However, these studies only extracted and reported these values without relating their findings of the variation in wind loads with heliostat orientation to the airflow characteristics around the structure. Besides, there is a marked absence of studies that rigorously explore in any detail the wind incidence effect and the impact that has on the aerodynamic behaviour of a heliostat. In this study, computational fluid dynamics was utilized to investigate the effect of wind incidence angles on a heliostat operating at varying tilt angles, to better characterize the aerodynamic loading of these structures and to relate these loads to the wind flow field around the heliostat. The results, validated against wind tunnel test data, showed that the tilt and wind incidence angle had a significant influence on the aerodynamic coefficients that varied strongly across the multiple operational conditions investigated. Moreover, the airflow field around the heliostat structure showed markedly different behaviour characteristics with the change in wind incidence angle. Considering a full range of tilt angles between 90° and − 90°, and incidence angles ranging from 0° to 90° with an angular resolution of 11.25°, the work delivers a fuller characterization of the lift, drag, base overturning moment and hinge moment coefficients than previously available. In achieving this, it delivers a generalized correlation for each of the coefficients based on the heliostat’s orientation with respect to the wind. When paired with existing gust loading relationships, these formulations provide a useful analytical tool to assess structural loads on a heliostat.

定日镜占中央塔式集中太阳能系统成本的很大一部分；因此，需要降低它们的成本。这样做面临的挑战之一是确保任何新设计仍能够应对施加在其上的负载，尤其是空气动力学负载。许多研究报告了定日镜在多种运行条件下遇到的空气动力学负荷。但是，这些研究仅提取并报告了这些值，而没有将他们的定日镜定向风荷载变化与结构周围的气流特征相关联。此外，目前还没有足够的研究来详细探讨风的影响以及对定日镜的空气动力学性能的影响。在这个研究中，利用计算流体动力学来研究风入射角对在不同倾斜角下运行的定日镜的影响，以更好地表征这些结构的空气动力学载荷并将这些载荷与定日镜周围的风流场相关联。根据风洞试验数据验证的结果表明，倾斜角和风入射角对在研究的多个运行条件下空气动力学系数有很大影响。此外，随着风入射角的变化，定日镜结构周围的气流场表现出明显不同的行为特征。考虑到90°和-90°之间的整个倾斜角范围以及0°至90°范围内的入射角以及11.25°的角分辨率，与以前相比，这项工作可以更全面地描述升力，阻力，基础倾覆力矩和铰链力矩系数。为此，它基于定日镜相对于风的方向，为每个系数提供了一个广义的相关性。当与现有阵风载荷关系配对时，这些公式可提供有用的分析工具来评估定日镜上的结构载荷。