NUMERICAL ESTIMATION OF THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY FROM BOUNDARY TEMPERATURE-MEASUREMENTS

A numerical algorithm is proposed to estimate the thermal conductivity of a homogeneous material from boundary temperature measurements. In this inverse analysis the homogeneous material is divided into several subdomains, and the thermal conductivity in each individual subdomain is assumed to be a linear function of temperature. A hybrid numerical scheme involving the combination of the Laplace transform technique a nd the control volume method is used to solve the pertinent nonlinear equations. The estimated thermal conductivity of the material is taken as a combination of estimated values of those subdomains. The accurac y of the predicted results is examined from an illustrated Ease using simulated transient boundary temperature data with measurement errors. Results show that good estimations an the thermal conductivity can be obtained with arbitrary initial guess values. The present study found that the thermal conductivity can be determined without measuring tem perature data inside the material.