Estimation of interfacial heat transfer coefficient for horizontal directional solidification of Sn-5wt%pb alloy using genetic algorithm as inverse method

Abstract

In the present work, a one-dimensional transient solidification heat transfer problem is solved to determine the unknown interfacial heat transfer coefficient (IHTC) at the mold–metal interface using genetic algorithm (GA), an evolutionary and widely known algorithm, as an inverse method. The forward model is numerically solved to obtain the exact temperatures by incorporating the appropriate correlation for the IHTC that varies with time. In order to mimic experiments, the exact temperatures are then perturbed with the standard deviations of 0.01, 0.02, and 0.03. In the inverse estimation, genetic algorithm is used to minimize the objective function, thereby reducing the error between the measured and the simulated temperatures. The study on the performance parameters of the algorithm is also discussed in detail. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.