Inverse Analysis of Various Surface Emissivity Distributions with Particle Swarm Optimization Method

Generally, thermal radiation heat transfer can be classified into two forms, surface and gas radiation, depending on the participation of the medium in the heat transfer process. The objective of the present study is to estimate the unknown surface emissivities of various profiles by the inverse analysis of the pure surface radiation problem. To do this, an axisymmetric cylindrical enclosure is considered and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is employed as an inverse solver to find the exact solutions efficiently. By comparing the convergence rates and accuracies of the obtained results, the present study intends to discuss the feasibility of the PSO method as the inverse solver of the surface radiation problem involving multi-parameter unknowns.