Inverse Estimation of Transient Heat Flux to Slab Surface

The transient heat flux was calculated using a model for inverse heat conduction problems based on temperature measurements. The unknown heat flux was taken as an optimization variable and solved by minimizing the differences between the calculated temperatures and the measured ones. Several examples were given to show the effectiveness and the accuracy of the inverse algorithm in estimating the transient heat flux to a slab surface. The results show that the inverse approach can be applied in the steel industry or in other areas where the target of investigation is inaccessible to direct measurements or difficult to be directly modeled.