Inverse natural convection problem of estimating wall heat flux

The inverse problem of determining wall heat flux from temperature measurem ent within the flow is investigated. The Boussinesq equation is used to mod el the natural convection caused by the heat flux at the bottom wall of a r ectangular domain. The inverse problem is posed as an optimization problem which is solved by a conjugate gradient method, employing the adjoint equat ion to obtain the descent direction. This method solves the inverse natural convection problem accurately without a priori information about the unkno wn function to be estimated. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights rese rved.