Use of infrared thermography for the explicit heat flux estimation employing regularized measurements with truncated eigenfunction expansions

This work addresses the experimental validation of the explicit estimation of timewise varying boundary heat fluxes in thermally thin plates employing temperature measurements obtained by infrared thermography. The measurements were regularized with the controlled truncation of the eigenfunction expansions that are employed to overcome the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem. In order to allow for a critical analysis of the obtained estimates, reference results were obtained from Bayesian inference, implemented with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and the total variation prior. The good results achieved with the explicit technique, with very little computational effort, demonstrate the feasibility of the developed approach for practical applications.

Automated summary

This work experimentally validates the explicit estimation of time-varying boundary heat fluxes in thermally thin plates using temperature measurements obtained by infrared thermography. Regularizing the measurements with controlled truncation of eigenfunction expansions overcomes the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem. Reference results obtained from Bayesian inference demonstrate the feasibility of the explicit technique for practical applications with minimal computational effort.