Open Access

ARTICLE

A Virtual Boundary Element Method for Three-Dimensional Inverse Heat Conduction Problems in Orthotropic Media

by Xu Liu¹, Guojian Shao¹, Xingxing Yue², Qingbin Yang³, Jingbo Su⁴

1 College of Mechanics and Materials, Hohai University, Nanjing, 211100, China.
2 School of Material Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing , 210094, China.
3 State Key Laboratory of Operation and Control of Renewable Energy & Storage Systems, China Electric Power Research Institute, Beijing, 100192, China.
4 College of Harbour, Coastal and Offshore Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, 210098, China.

*Corresponding Author: Xingxing Yue. Email: .

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2018, 117(2), 189-211. https://doi.org/10.31614/cmes.2018.03947

Abstract

This paper aims to apply a virtual boundary element method (VBEM) to solve the inverse problems of three-dimensional heat conduction in orthotropic media. This method avoids the singular integrations in the conventional boundary element method, and can be treated as a potential approach for solving the inverse problems of the heat conduction owing to the boundary-only discretization and semi-analytical algorithm. When the VBEM is applied to the inverse problems, the numerical instability may occur if a virtual boundary is not properly chosen. The method encounters a highly ill-conditioned matrix for the larger distance between the physical boundary and the virtual boundary, and otherwise is hard to avoid the singularity of the source point. Thus, it must adopt an appropriate regularization method to deal with the ill-posed systems of inverse problems. In this study, the VBEM and different regularization techniques are combined to model the inverse problem of three-dimensional heat conduction in orthotropic media. The proper regularization techniques not only make the virtual boundary to be allocated freer, but also solve the ill-conditioned equation of the inverse problem. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed method is efficient, accurate and numerically stable for solving the inverse problems of three-dimensional heat conduction in orthotropic media.

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Keywords

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