Estimation of linearly temperature-dependent thermal conductivity using an inverse analysis

A linearly temperature-dependent thermal conductivity is estimated in steady state heat conduction problems using an inverse analysis. A body fitted grid generation technique is employed to mesh the two-dimensional body and solve the direct heat conduction problem. An efficient, accurate, and easy to implement method is presented to compute the sensitivity coefficients through derived expressions. The main feature of the sensitivity analysis is that all sensitivities can be obtained in one solve, irrespective of the number of unknown parameters. The conjugate gradient method along with the discrepancy principle is used in the inverse analysis to minimize the objective function and achieve the desired solution. The ability to efficiently and accurately recover the non-constant thermal conductivity is demonstrated through a number of benchmark problems.