Boundary element method for contactless estimation of spatially varying internal heat transfer coefficient in circular pipes

Abstract

In the present study it is proposed a solution approach of the Inverse Heat Conduction Problem (IHCP) intended at assessing the local heat transfer coefficient on the inner wall of a tube, under a forced convection problem. The estimation method is established on the Boundary Element Method (BEM) combined with the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition (TSVD) methodology, employed to manage the ill-conditioned nature of the problem. The numerical results of the direct problem, built by the BEM, are firstly validated, and consequently adopted as synthetic data inputs to resolve the IHCP and corroborate the whole assessment procedure. This approach is also tested with experimental data about forced convection problem in coiled pipes. In these geometries, the convective heat transfer coefficient changes considerably along the wall periphery and for this reason, it constitutes a perfect example to test the ability of the presented method to infer a spatially varying internal heat transfer coefficient distribution.