HELIOS: a computer program for modeling the solar thermal test facility, a users guide

HELIOS is a flexible computer code for evaluations of proposed designs for central tower solar energy collector systems, for safety calculations on the threat to personnel and to the facility itself, for determination of how various input parameters alter the power collected, and for design trade-offs. Input variables include atmospheric transmission effects, reflector shape and surface errors, suntracking errors, focusing and alignment strategies, receiver design, placement positions of the tower and mirrors, time-of-day, and day-of-year for the calculation. Plotting and editing computer codes are available. Complete input instructions, code-structure details, and output explanation are given. The code is in use on CDC 6600 and CDC 7600 computers.