Simultaneous estimation of electrical and thermal properties of material from the Tone-Burst Eddy current Thermography (TBET) time-temperature data

In this paper, an inversion method is proposed to determine simultaneously the electrical and thermal properties of a given isotropic material from the time-temperature data obtained from the Tone-Burst Eddy current Thermography (TBET). A multi-physics forward model for computing the surface temperature data was used in a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based inversion technique to determine the material properties such as electrical conductivity (σ), thermal conductivity (k), density (ρ), and specific heat (Cp) simultaneously. Different trials were carried out initially with simulated temperature data (with and without noise). A typical case of inversion of anisotropic material properties using a 2D finite element model is also discussed. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.