One-step GPS for the estimation of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity

In this paper we are concerned with the estimation of temperature-dependent thermal conductivity of a one-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem. First, we construct a one-step group-preserving scheme (GPS) for the semi-discretization of quasilinear heat conduction equation, and then derive a quasilinear algebraic equation to determine the unknown thermal conductivity under a given initial temperature and a measured temperature perturbed by noise at time T. The new method does not require any prior information on the functional form of thermal conductivity. Several examples are examined to show that the new approach has high accuracy and efficiency, and the number of iterations spent in solving the quasilinear algebraic equation is smaller than five even in a large temperature range. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.