Inverse radiation problem of source term in three-dimensional complicated geometric semitransparent media

A method is presented to identify the three-dimensional source term distribution in complicated geometric systems of known radiative properties from the knowledge of the radiative intensities exiting the boundaries. The inverse radiation problem is formulated as an optimization problem, and solved by the conjugate gradient method that minimizes the errors between the exit radiative intensities calculated and the experimental measurements. The analysis consists of the direct problem, the gradient equation, and the sensitivity problem. In this approach, the discrete ordinates method is employed to solve the direct and the sensitivity problems in general body-fitted coordinates. The effects of the measurement errors on the accuracy of the inverse analysis are investigated. The study shows that the three-dimensional source term distribution in complicated geometric systems can be estimated accurately, even with noisy data.