Estimation for inner surface geometry of furnace wall using inverse process combined with grey prediction model

In this work the inner surface geometry of a cylindrical furnace wall is estimated using inverse process method combined with grey prediction model. In estimating process a virtual area extended from the inner surface of furnace wall is used for analysis. The heat conduction equation and the boundary condition are first discretized by finite difference method to form a linear matrix equation; the inverse model is then optimized by linear least-squares error method and the temperatures of virtual boundary are obtained from a few of measured temperatures in furnace wall using the linear inverse model; and finally the temperature distribution of system is got by direct process and the inner surface geometry of furnace wall can be estimated accordingly. The result shows that using inverse process combined with grey prediction model the geometry can be exactly estimated from relatively small number of measured temperatures. Moreover, the effects of measurement error, location, and number of measured points on the estimation for inner surface geometry of furnace wall are discussed in detail.     

Geometry estimation of the furnace inner wall by an inverse approach

The geometry of a furnace inner wall is estimated by an inverse method in this work. Based upon the concept of a virtual area, in the analysis process the heat conduction equation with boundary conditions was first discretized by a finite difference method to form a matrix equation. And then the linear least-squares error method was applied to determine the temperature of virtual boundary by inverse process. Finally, the geometry of the furnace inner wall can be obtained by direct process. Furthermore, the effects of the measurement errors, number of measurements and position of measurements on the deviation of geometry prediction are also discussed.     

A three-dimensional inverse geometry problem in identifying irregular boundary configurations

A three-dimensional inverse geometry problem (shape identification problem) in determining the unknown irregular surface configurations by utilizing the conjugate gradient method (CGM) and a general purpose commercial code CFD-RC is successfully developed and examined in this study based on the simulated measured temperature distributions on the bottom surface by infrared thermography. Results obtained by using the technique of CGM to solve the inverse geometry problem are justified based on the numerical experiments. Three test cases are performed to test the validity of the present algorithm by using different types of surface shapes, initial guess and measurement errors. Results show that excellent estimations on the unknown surface geometry can be obtained with any arbitrary initial guesses.     

A transient three-dimensional inverse geometry problem in estimating the space and time-dependent irregular boundary shapes

A transient three-dimensional shape identification problem (inverse geometry problem) to determine the unknown irregular and moving boundary configurations by utilizing the steepest descend method (SDM) and a general purpose commercial code CFD-RC is successfully developed and examined in this study based on the simulated measured temperature distributions on the bottom surface by infrared thermography. The advantage of calling CFD-RC as a subroutine in the present inverse calculation lies in that its auto-mesh function enables the handling of this moving boundary problem. Results obtained by using the technique of SDM to solve the inverse geometry problem are justified based on the numerical experiments. Two test cases are performed to test the validity of the present algorithm by using different types of boundary shapes, initial guesses and measurement errors. Results show that reliable estimations on the unknown space and time-dependent boundary geometry can be obtained when the measurement errors are considered.     

A novel non-iterative inverse method for estimating boundary condition of the furnace inner wall

A novel non-iterative inverse method with two-step scheme based on boundary element method (BEM) is proposed to estimate the boundary condition of furnace inner wall. Firstly, a matrix equation of heat transfer is formed by BEM with some measurement points. Then, the boundary value of discrete nodes on the furnace inner wall can be solved by the least-square error method. Different shapes of the furnace inner wall are considered with different function expressions, where some factors are discussed to validate the performance of present method such as the measured error, the number of measurement points, the distributive position of measurement points and the mixed boundary conditions. The results of numerical examples show that the present method can obtain the great performance on both the inversing accuracy and the computing efficiency even for the large heat flux.     

A three-dimensional inverse geometry problem in estimating the space and time-dependent shape of an irregular internal cavity

A three-dimensional inverse geometry problem (or shape identification problem) to estimate the unknown space and time-dependent irregular shape of internal cavity by utilizing the gradient-based steepest descent method (SDM) and a general purpose commercial code CFD-ACE+ is considered in the present study. The validity of the present inverse algorithm is examined based on the simulated measured temperature distributions on the outer surface by an imaginary infrared scanner. The advantage of calling CFD-ACE+ as a subroutine in this shape identification problem lies in its characteristics of automatic mesh generation since this function of CFD-ACE+ enables the easily-handling of the moving boundary problem. Two numerical test cases are performed to test the validity and accuracy of the present shape identification algorithm by using different types of cavity shapes, initial guesses and measurement errors. Results show that excellent estimations on the unknown geometry of the internal cavity can be obtained.     

Inverse Geometry Design of Radiating Enclosure Filled with Participating Media Using Meshless Method

A new inverse geometry design methodology is presented in this work for designing a two-dimensional radiating enclosure filled with participating media to meet the pre-specified radiative heat flux distribution on a designed boundary wall. Akima cubic interpolation is employed to approximate the shape of the unknown design surface and transform the continuous geometry shape design to the discrete points' position design. To avoid the tedious remeshing of the variable computational domain in the inverse geometry design processes, the direct collocation meshless method is adopted to solve the radiative transfer problem in the enclosure. The geometry shape of the design surface is optimized using the conjugate gradient method, and the zeroth order regularization method is chosen to stabilize the inverse solutions. A test example is taken to verify the new method presented in this work. The inverse design results show that pre-specified design requirement on the boundary wall can be successfully obtained using the new methodology.     

Detection of hot spot through inverse thermal analysis in superconducting RF cavities

An inverse heat conduction problem in a superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity is examined. A localized defect is simulated as a point-heating source on the inner surface (RF surface) of the evacuated niobium cavity. Liquid helium acts as a coolant on the outer surface of the cavity. By measuring the outer surface temperature profile of the cavity using relatively few sensors, the temperature and location of a hot spot on the inner surface of the niobium are calculated using an inverse heat conduction technique. The inverse method requires a direct solution of a three-dimensional heat conduction problem through the cavity wall thickness along with temperature measurements from sensors on the outer surface of the cavity, which is immersed in liquid helium. A non-linear parameter estimation program then estimates the unknown location and temperature rise of the hot spot inside the cavity. The validation of the technique has been done through an experiment conducted on a niobium sample at room temperature.     

A two-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem in estimating the fluid temperature in a pipeline

An inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP) was investigated in the two-dimensional section of a pipe elbow with thermal stratification to estimate the unknown transient fluid temperatures near the inner wall of the pipeline. An inverse algorithm based on the conjugate gradient method (CGM) was proposed to solve the IHCP using temperature measurements on the outer wall. In order to examine the accuracy of estimations, some comparisons have been made in this case. The temperatures obtained from the solution of the direct heat conduction problem (DHCP) using the finite element method (FEM) were pseudo-experimental input data on the outer wall for the IHCP. Comparisons of the estimated fluid temperatures with experimental fluid temperatures near the inner wall showed that the IHCP could accurately capture the actual temperature in form of the frequency of the temperature fluctuations. The analysis also showed that the IHCP needed at least 13 measurement points for the average absolute error to be dramatically reduced for the present IHCP with 37 nodes on each half of the pipe wall.     

Measurement of Transient Fluid Temperature in a Pipeline

The aim of this paper is to develop a method of determining the heat transfer coefficients on the inner surface of the pipeline and outer surface of the thermometer used to measure the temperature of a fluid flowing under high pressure. The method is based on the solutions to the inverse heat conduction problems for the thermometer and the pipeline wall. The heat transfer coefficients are determined based on the measurement of the temperature of a cylindrical metal thermometer and the temperature of the wall of a cylindrical pipeline. The temperature sensor is located in the pipeline wall close to the inner surface. The correlations for the Nusselt numbers used to determine heat transfer coefficients on the outer surface of the thermometer and the inner surface of the pipeline contain unknown coefficients which are found using the least squares method. The unknown coefficients are selected so that the sum of the squares of differences between the fluid temperature determined based on the measurement of the temperature of the pipeline wall and the fluid temperature obtained from measurements inside the thermometer, calculated for several dozen set time points, is as small as possible.     

燃烧室内三维温度场的辐射反问题

本文提出了一种在介质辐射特性已知的条件下,由壁面入射辐射热流的测量值反演燃烧室内三维温度场的方法。该方法是在辐射传递方程离散坐标近似的基础上,用求目标函数极小值的共轭梯度法进行反演计算。通过对吸收系数、散射不对称因子、反照率、壁面黑度和燃烧室大小尺寸等参数对反演精度影响的分析,结果表明,即使存在随机测量误差,这些参数对温度场反演精度的影响也不大,本文所提出的方法可较精确地反演燃烧室内三维温度场。     

Shape identification for inverse geometry heat conduction problems by FEM without iteration

The boundary geometry shape is identified by the finite element method (FEM) without iteration and mesh reconstruction for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) inverse heat conduction problems. First, the direct heat conduction problem with the exact domain is solved by the FEM and the temperatures of measurement points are obtained. Then, by introducing a virtual boundary, a virtual domain is formed. By minimizing the difference between the temperatures of measurement points in the exact domain and those in the virtual domain, the temperatures of the points on the virtual boundary are calculated based on the least square error method and the Tikhonov regularization. Finally, the objective geometry shape can be estimated by the method of searching the isothermal curve or isothermal surface for 2-D or 3-D problems, respectively. In the process, no iterative calculation is needed. The proposed method has a tremendous advantage in reducing the computational time for the inverse geometry problems. Numerical examples are presented to test the validity of the proposed approach. Meanwhile, the influences of measurement noise, virtual boundary, measurement point number, and measurement point position on the boundary geometry prediction are also investigated in the examples. The solutions show that the method is accurate and efficient to identify the unknown boundary geometry configurations for 2-D and 3-D heat conduction problems.     

Inverse prediction of wall temperature distribution on a cylinder exposed to radiatively active flow

In this study, the unknown wall temperature profile of a cylinder was predicted by applying the inverse method. The temperature profile of the cylinder wall was predicted from the given temperature data at measurement points near the cylinder wall. The cylinder was assumed to represent a typical pipe in a bundle of heat exchange tubes operating in a high temperature system. Radiative heat transfer was incorporated as one of major heat transfer modes to consider a hot gas flow passing over the cylinder. The corresponding inverse problem was solved by minimizing an objective function by applying the iterative conjugate gradient method. A multi-block grid composed of three different blocks was used for better computational accuracy and convenience in locating the measurement points. A new method, which could be applicable to non-symmetric geometry, was adopted to solve the adjoint equation. In this study, the effects of number and location of the measurement points were numerically investigated. When the measurement points were too close to the cylinder, the predicted temperature profile exhibited larger fluctuations. The results have also shown that an appropriate number of measurement points were required to improve the prediction of the boundary temperature profile.     

Particle Swarm Optimization-based algorithms for solving inverse heat conduction problems of estimating surface heat flux

An inverse analysis of estimating a time-dependent surface heat flux for a three-dimensional heat conduction problem is presented. A global optimization method known as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is employed to estimate the unknown heat flux at the inner surface of a crystal tube from the knowledge of temperature measurements obtained at the external surface. Three modifications of the PSO-based algorithm, PSO with constriction factor, PSO with time-varying acceleration of the cognitive and social coefficients, and PSO with mutation are carried out to implement the optimization process of the inverse analysis. The results show that the PSO with mutation algorithm is significantly better than other PSO-based algorithms because it can overcome the drawback of trapping in the local optimum points and obtain better inverse solutions. The effects of measurement errors, number of dimensionalities, and number of generations on the inverse solutions are also investigated.     

A 2-D INVERSE METHOD FOR SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION OF THE INLET TEMPERATURE AND WALL HEAT FLUX IN A LAMINAR CIRCULAR DUCT FLOW

A two-dimensional inverse analysis is presented for the estimation of the inlet temperature of the fluid flow and wall heat flux in a thermally developing hydrodynamically developed laminar flow in a duct. The inverse analysis is based on the temperature reading located at a stream inside the duct at several different points. At the beginning of the study, finite difference methods are employed to discretize the problem, and then a linear inverse model is constructed to identify the unknown conditions. The present approach is to rearrange the matrix forms of the differential governing equation and estimate the inlet temperature of the fluid and unknown surface conditions of the duct. The linear least squares method is adopted to find the solution. The advantage of applying this method in inverse analysis is that no prior information is needed on the functional form of the unknown quantities, no initial guess is required, and the number of iterations in the calculation process is limited to one. The effects of sensor position, magnitude of measurement error, and number of measurements on the accuracy of estimates are examined. The results show that the preferred position of the sensor is closer to the inlet region and only few measuring points are sufficient to estimate the wall heat flux and inlet temperatures of the fluid when the measurement errors are neglected. When the measurement errors an considered, more measuring points are needed in order to increase the congruence of the estimated results to exact solutions.     

SIMULTANEOUS ESTIMATION OF INLET TEMPERATURE AND WALL HEAT FLUX IN TURBULENT CIRCULAR PIPE FLOW

An inverse heat convection problem is solved for simultaneous estimation of unknown inlet temperature and wall heat flux in a thermally developing, hydrodynamically developed turbulent flow in a circular pipe based on temperature measurements obtained at several different locations in the stream. The direct problem of turbulent forced convection is solved with a finite difference method with appropriate algebraic turbulence modelling. Although we seek for two unknown functions, we formulate the inverse problem as one of parameter estimation through the representation of the unknown inlet temperature profile and the wall heat flux distribution by one-dimensional finite element interpolation. Nodal values of the inlet temperature and the wall heat flux at chosen positions are determined as unknown parameters through the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm for minimization procedure. Numerical results for several testing cases with different magnitudes of measurement errors are examined by using simulated experimental data. The effects of the number and the locations of the temperature measurement points are discussed.     

Estimation of slab surface radiative emissivities by solving an inverse coupled conduction,convection, and radiation problem

Slab surface radiative emissivities severely affect the radiative heat transfer in a reheating furnace, as well as the slabs’ coupled conduction, convection, and radiation. Accurate evaluation of these parameters is of significance to ensure the high accuracy of the mathematical model for a reheating furnace, which is beneficial to the energy saving. However, it is difficult to directly and accurately measure these parameters. In this article, slab surface radiative emissivities in a reheating furnace are estimated by solving a nonlinear inverse problem, which is an inverse coupled conduction, convection, and radiation problem. An efficient and accurate gradient method, i.e., Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, is applied to obtain the solution of the inverse problem. First, a finite difference method and the complex-variable-differentiation method are used for sensitivity analysis, and the inversion accuracy coupled with the efficiency is demonstrated. Then, effects of initial guesses, measurement errors, and measurement locations on estimated slab surface radiative emissivities are investigated in detail. Finally, conclusions are drawn based on the results and analysis.     

Three-Dimensional Pipe Fouling Layer Estimation by Using Conjugate Gradient Inverse Method

In this study, a conjugate gradient method based inverse algorithm is applied to estimate the unknown three-dimensional fouling-layer profiles on the inner wall of a piping system using simulated temperature measurements taken on the pipe wall. The temperature data obtained from the direct problem are used to simulate the exact temperature measurements. Results show that an excellent estimation on the fouling-layer profiles can be obtained for the two cases investigated in this study. The technique presented here can be used as an alternative to ultrasonic waves fouling detection techniques to provide crucial information for the optimization of cleaning schedule for piping systems.     

Identification of wall heat flux for turbulent forced convection by inverse analysis

An inverse problem for turbulent forced convection between parallel flat plates is investigated. The space- and time-dependent heat flux at the upper wall is estimated from the temperature measurements taken inside the flow. In the present study, the conjugate gradient method is adopted for the estimation of the unknown wall heat flux. No prior information is needed for the functional form of the wall heat flux in the inverse analysis. The effects of the measurement errors, the functional form of the wall heat flux, and the location of the sensors on the accuracy of the estimation are investigated. The reconstruction of the wall heat flux is satisfactory when simulated exact or noisy data are input to the inverse analysis. The sensitivity coefficients are discussed in this paper. As expected, it is shown that the accuracy of the estimation can be improved when the sensors are located closer to the upper wall.     

Monitoring of transient 3D temperature distribution and thermal stress in pressure elements based on the wall temperature measurement

Abstract

Two methods for monitoring the thermal stresses in pressure components of thermal power plants are presented. In the first method, the transient temperature distribution in the pressure component is determined by measuring the transient wall temperature at several points located on the outer insulated surface of the component. The transient temperature distribution in the pressure component, including the temperature of the inner surface is determined from the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP). In the first method, there is no need to know the temperature of the fluid and the heat transfer coefficient. In the second method, thermal stresses in a pressure component with a complicated shape are computed using the finite element method (FEM) based on experimentally estimated fluid temperature and known heat transfer coefficient. A new thermometer with good dynamic properties has been developed and applied in practice, providing a much more accurate measurement of the temperature of the flowing fluid in comparison with standard thermometers. The heat transfer coefficient on the inner surface of a pressure element can be determined from the empirical relationships available in the literature. A numerical-experimental method of determination of the transient heat transfer coefficient based on the solution of the 3D-inverse heat conduction problem has also been proposed. The heat transfer coefficient on the internal surface of a pressure element is determined based on an experimentally determined local transient temperature distribution on the external surface of the element or the basis of wall temperature measurement at six points located near the internal surface if fluid temperature changes are fast. Examples of determining thermal and pressure stresses in the thick-walled horizontal superheater header and the horizontal header of the steam cooler in a power boiler with the use of real measurement data are presented.