Three-dimensional (3D) inverse heat flux evaluation based on infrared thermography

Inverse methods in heat transfer are generally associated with the estimation of unknown heat fluxes on inaccessible surfaces, based on temperature measurements performed on the accessible walls. In the present application, an inverse heat conduction method was developed that uses temperature measurements performed by infrared thermography. The three-dimensional (3D) transient inverse heat transfer problem was solved by using an iterative regularisation with a conjugate gradient method. The inverse solver was coupled with a finite element commercial code. The efficiency of the method was demonstrated through numerical simulations and experimentally validated in a simplified set-up.