%0 Journal Article %T Design Optimization and Experimental Validation of Low-Cost ‎Flat Plate Collector Under Central Qasssim Climate %J Journal of Applied and Computational Mechanics %I Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz %Z 2383-4536 %A Nejlaoui, Mohamed %A Alghafis, Abdullah %A Sadig, Hussain %D 2021 %\ 04/01/2021 %V 7 %N 2 %P 811-819 %! Design Optimization and Experimental Validation of Low-Cost ‎Flat Plate Collector Under Central Qasssim Climate %K Flat Plate Collector %K Solar energy %K Design optimization %K Efficiency %K Cost %K MOMICA %R 10.22055/jacm.2020.34932.2515 %X In Saudi Arabia, hot water for domestic uses consumes a great portion of home electricity. Thus, solar collectors can be considered as an important alternative to reduce the amount of consumed electricity. Therefore, in recent researches, a great attention was given to develop flat plate collector (FPC) with optimal performance. In this paper, a multi-objective modified imperialist competitive algorithm (MOMICA) was employed for optimizing the performance of a FPC. The optimization results showed a capability to reach higher FPC efficiency with a relatively small collector area and hence lower price. It has also been proved that the change of the insulator depth from 0.02 to 0.05 m has a strong influence on the system’s efficiency. %U https://jacm.scu.ac.ir/article_16247_82abad838d511282f336851c69d27eb3.pdf