Identification of thermal conductivity coefficient using a given temperature field (Q1757729)

The authors consider the initial boundary problem for the two-dimensional heat equation; the boundary conditions are of Dirichlet type. The goal of the investigation is to find such an initially unknown thermal conductivity \(K(T)\) dependent on the temperature \(T\) that the deviation of the calculated temperature field from the given one will be minimal. Here, minimality is understood in the sense of the least squares method. The problem is solved numerically. Piecewise linear interpolation is used to approximate \(K(T)\). Parameters of this interpolation become arguments of the goal function which is minimized by some gradient method. To obtain gradients of the goal function, the authors implement the technique of fast automatic differentiation. The authors show that, under certain conditions, the solution of the stated problem is not unique. Several examples are given to illustrate this statement. The rate of convergence is also discussed.