RECOVERING THE FRONT SURFACE TEMPERATURE OF METALLIC AND COMPOSITE TARGETS SUBJECT TO LOCALIZED HEATING VIA INVERSE HEAT TRANSFER MODELING

Temperature and heat flux on inaccessible surfaces can be estimated by solving an inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) based on the measured temperature and/or heat flux on accessible surfaces. The heat flux and temperature on the front (heated) surface of three-dimensional (3-D) metallic and composite objects are recovered using the conjugate gradient method (CGM) with temperature and heat flux measured on back surface (opposite to the heated surface). The effects of the uncertainties in thermophysical properties on the inverse solutions are also examined. Efforts are made to reduce the total number of heat flux sensors on the back surface required to recover the front-surface heating condition. The Direct Cosine Transform (DCT)/Laplace method has been developed for three dimensional slabs whose physical properties are assumed to be temperature independent.