Abstract: The coupled heat transfer processes of radiation, conduction and convection in semitransparent planar slab are analyzed. An inverse method is presented for estimating the unknown boundary incident radiation heat flux in semitransparent planar slab with transparent boundaries from the knowledge of the radiation intensities exiting the boundaries. The effects of anisotropic scattering, absorption coefficient, scattering coefficient, fluid temperature outside the boundaries, convection heat transfer coefficients, conduction coefficient of semitransparent media and slab thickness on the accuracy of the inverse analysis are investigated. The results show that this method is praticable.

Key words: inverse radiative problem, radiation heat flux, semitransparent planar slab, discrete ordinates method, conjugate gradient method