Estimation of heat flux and thermal stresses in multilayer gun barrel with thermal contact resistance

In this study, a conjugate gradient method based on an inverse algorithm is applied to estimate the unknown time-dependent heat flux at the inner surface of gun barrel, in which the interlayer thermal contact resistance between the steel cylinder and the chrome coating is taken into account in the boundary conditions. While knowing the temperature history at the measuring position, no prior information is needed on the functional form of the unknown heat flux. The temperature data calculated from the direct problem are used to simulate the temperature measurement. The influence of measurement errors and initial guess values upon the precision of the estimated results is also investigated. Results show that an excellent estimation on the time-dependent heat flux, temperature distributions, and thermal stresses can be obtained for the case considered in this study.