Author(s)

J. Zueco & G. Monreal

Abstract

A software application has been developed for the numerical solution of inverse problems in heat conduction. The developed software allows the estimation of specific heat and thermal conductivity both individually and simultaneously – temperature dependent – and allows application of a variety of boundary conditions. The first step is to accurately estimate the starting point, then estimate the thermophysical properties, presenting the solution by a linear function of straight stretches. The input data is the temperature history at a particular location of the solid. The iterative least-squares approach is used to minimize the functional and in all cases a piecewise function is used to approximate the solution. No prior information is used for the functional forms of the unknown specific heat, because this problem is considered a function estimation problem. In all the cases a piece-wise function is used to approximate the solution. The Network Simulation Method is the numerical method used, with a design of the network model made easy, with very few electric devices. The software developed is used to run the network so that no mathematical manipulations are required. The results confirm that it is possible to estimate the thermophysical properties using experimental temperature history and a procedure inverse. As regards the convergence of the solutions, no restrictions concerning the time interval need to be imposed by the user. Keywords: network model, inverse problem, non-linear thermal processing, temperature dependent thermal properties.

Keywords

network model, inverse problem, non-linear thermal processing, temperature dependent thermal properties.