A sequential method to estimate the strength of the heat source based on symbolic computation

A sequential method is proposed to determine the strength of the heat source in inverse heat conduction problems. This method uses symbols to represent the temporal source strength and then executes a computational method to calculate the temperature distribution. Consequently, a set of linear equations is constructed from the comparison between the calculated symbolic temperature and the measured numerical temperature. Thus, the inverse problem is solved through the linear least-squares error method, which leads to a solution of the unknown source strength at the present time step. Results from the examples confirm that the proposed method is applicable in solving the inverse heat source problem. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.