A Markov Chain Monte Carlo-Metropolis Hastings Approach for the Simultaneous Estimation of Heat Generation and Heat Transfer Coefficient from a Teflon Cylinder

This paper reports the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Metropolis Hastings (MH) approach, to solve an inverse heat transfer problem. Three-dimensional, steady state, conjugate heat transfer from a Teflon cylinder of dimensions 100 mm diameter and 100 mm length with uniform volumetric internal heat generation is considered. The goal is to estimate volumetric heat generation and heat transfer coefficient, given the temperature data at certain fixed location on the surface of the cylinder. The internal volumetric heat generation is specified as input and the temperature and heat transfer coefficient values are obtained by a numerical solution to the governing equation. The temperature values also depend on heat transfer coefficient which is obtained by solving Navier–Stokes equation to obtain flow information. In order to reduce the computational cost, a neural network is trained from the computational fluid dynamics simulations. This is posed as an inverse problem wherein volumetric heat generation and heat transfer coefficient are unknown but the temperature data is known by conducting experiments. The novelty of the paper is the simultaneous determination of volumetric heat generation and heat transfer coefficient for the experimentally measured steady-state temperatures from a Teflon cylinder using MCMC-MH as an inverse model in a Bayesian framework and finally, the estimates are reported in terms of mean, maximum a posteriori, and the standard deviation which is the uncertainty associated with the estimated parameters.