Estimation of unknown wall heat flux in turbulent circular pipe flow

An inverse heat convection problem is solved for the estimation of a nonuni form wall heat flux in a thermally developing, hydrodynamically developed t urbulent flow in a circular pipe based on temperature measurements obtained at several different locations in the stream. The direct problem of turbul ent forced convection is solved with a finite difference method with approp riate algebraic turbulence modelling. The unknown wall heat flux is represe nted by a one-dimensional finite element interpolation. Nodal values at sev eral chosen points are determined as unknown parameters by the Levenberg-Ma rquardt algorithm. The effects of sensor number and position are examined, (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.