Inverse radiation problem of temperature distribution in one-dimensional isotropically scattering participating slab with variable refractive index

In this paper, an inverse analysis is performed for estimation of source term distribution from the measured exit radiation intensities at the boundary surfaces in a one-dimensional absorbing, emitting and isotropically scattering medium between two parallel plates with variable refractive index. The variation of refractive index is assumed to be linear. The radiative transfer equation is solved by the constant quadrature discrete ordinate method. The inverse problem is formulated as an optimization problem for minimizing an objective function which is expressed as the sum of square deviations between measured and estimated exit radiation intensities at boundary surfaces. The conjugate gradient method is used to solve the inverse problem through an iterative procedure. The effects of various variables on source estimation are investigated such as type of source function, errors in the measured data and system parameters, gradient of refractive index across the medium, optical thickness, single scattering albedo and boundary emissivities. The results show that in the case of noisy input data, variation of system parameters may affect the inverse solution, especially at high error values in the measured data. The error in measured data plays more important role than the error in radiative system parameters except the refractive index distribution; however the accuracy of source estimation is very sensitive toward error in refractive index distribution. Therefore, refractive index distribution and measured exit intensities should be measured accurately with a limited error bound, in order to have an accurate estimation of source term in a graded index medium.