Determination of Thermal Parameters using Thermography and Data Assimilation and its Application to the Convective Heat Transfer Coefficient

Abstract This paper presents a method to determine thermal parameters, which can neither be calculated analytically nor measured directly. Specifically, the convective heat transfer coefficient is discussed, which is usually determined using empirical models, namely the Nusselt correlations. To overcome the lack of information about the relation between temperature and parameters, the methodology of data assimilation is applied. Therefore, a dynamic model is combined with measurement data from a thermography experiment avoiding interference with the actual process enabling inline parameter identification. The method is first applied on artificially created simulation data and second on real measurement data. This paper shows that the developed method estimates the heat transfer coefficient in agreement with the well-known Nusselt correlations. Moreover, the present work compares different estimation strategies and gives a recommendation regarding state-parameter, pure parameter or combined estimation, including a detailed analysis of the variation of a smoothing parameter.