Open Access

ARTICLE

A Thermal Tomography Problem in Estimating the Unknown Interfacial Enclosure in a Multiple Region Domain with an Internal Cavity

by Cheng-Hung Huang¹, Meng-Ting Chaing¹

1 Department of Systems and Naval Mechatronic Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2009, 53(2), 153-180. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2009.053.153

Abstract

A three-dimensional thermal tomography problem (or inverse geometry problem) in estimating the unknown irregular shape of interfacial enclosure (or surface) for a multiple region domain with an internal cavity by using the steepest descent method (SDM) and a general purpose commercial code CFD-ACE+ is examined in the present work based on the simulated measured temperature distributions on the outer surface obtained by infrared thermography. The advantage of calling CFD-ACE+ as a subroutine in this thermal tomography problem lies in its characteristics of easily-handling the moving boundary problem considered here since it has the function of automatic grid generation. Three test cases are examined to test the validity of the present thermal tomography algorithm by using different shapes of interfacial enclosure surface, initial guesses and measurement errors. Results show that reliable estimations on the unknown geometry of the interfacial enclosure can be obtained.

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