Boundary element methods for solving inverse boundary conditions identification problems

This thesis explores various features of the boundary element method (BEM) used in solving heat transfer boundary conditions identification problems. In particular, we present boundary integral equation (BIE) formulations and procedures of the numerical computation for the approximation of the boundary temperatures, heat fluxes and space, time or temperature dependent heat transfer coefficients. There are many practical heat transfer situations where such problems occur, for example in high temperature regions or hostile environments, such as in combustion chambers, steel cooling processes, etc., in which the actual method of heat transfer on the surface is unknown. In such situations the boundary condition relating the heat flux to the difference between the boundary temperature and that of the surrounding fluid is represented by an unknown function which may depend on space, time, or temperature. In these inverse heat conduction problems (IHCP), the BEM is formulated as a minimization of some functional that measures the discrepancy between the measured data, say the average temperature on a portion of the boundary or at an instant over the whole domain. The minimization provides solutions that are consistent with the data. This indicates that the BEM algorithms for the IRCP are robust, stable and predict reliable results. When the input data is noisy, we have used the truncated singular value decomposition and the Tikhonov regularisation methods to stabilise the solution of the IRCI' boundary conditions identification. Numerical approximations have been obtained and, where possible, the results obtained are compared to the analytical solutions.