Determination of Thermal Properties in Inverse Heat Conduction Problems Using Differential Evolution

The inverse analysis is encountered in various branches of science and engineering. In the field of heat transfer, inverse analysis is used for the estimation of surface conditions such as temperature and heat flux. Also, the determination of thermal properties such as thermal conductivity and heat capacity of solids by utilizing transient temperature measurements collected from points within the medium finds numerous practical applications. The standard heat conduction problems are in general well posed, i.e., the solution exists, the solution is unique, and the solution is stable with respect to small changes in the input data. On the other hand, the inverse heat conduction problems are sensitive to measurement errors: as a result, they are ill posed. Traditionally, three alternatives are proposed for the solution of parameter identification problems by using optimization techniques: the deterministic, the non-deterministic and the hybrid approaches. Among the existing methodologies, the Differential Evolution Algorithm has been applied with success both to mono and multi-objective contexts. In this work, an inverse analysis is presented to determine the thermal conductivity and heat capacity in heat conduction problems. The results show that the methodology used represents an interesting alternative to the treatment of the inverse problem as compared with those obtained by using the Multi-Particle Collision Algorithm.