Influence of nuisance parameter uncertainty on the retrieval of the thermal conductivity of the macroscopically-homogeneous material within a cylinder from exterior temperature measurements

The retrieval, using external steady-state temperature field data, of the temperature-independent thermal conductivity of a z-independent cylindrical object subjected to an external, z-independent, heat load is studied. This inverse problem possesses an exact solution, both for continuous and discrete input data, whose properties, with respect to the various nuisance parameter uncertainties, are analyzed, first in a mathematical, and subsequently in a numerical manner for noiseless data.