Inverse Heat Conduction in a Composite Slab With Pyrolysis Effect and Temperature-Dependent Thermophysical Properties

The inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) in a one-dimensional composite slab with rate-dependent pyrolysis chemical reaction and outgassing flow effects is investigated using the conjugate gradient method (CGM). The thermal properties of the composites are considered to be temperature-dependent, which makes the IHCP a nonlinear problem. The inverse problem is formulated in such a way that the front-surface heat flux is chosen as the unknown function to be recovered, and the front-surface temperature is computed as a by-product of the IHCP algorithm, which uses back-surface temperature and heat flux measurements. The proposed IHCP formulation is then applied to solve the IHCP in an organic composite slab whose front surface is subjected to high intensity periodic laser heating. It is shown that an extra temperature sensor located at an interior position is necessary since the organic composites usually possess a very low thermal conductivity. It is also found that the frequency of the periodic laser heating flux plays a dominant role in the inverse solution accuracy. In addition, the robustness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by its capability in handling the case of thermophysical properties with random errors.