Identification of Contact Failures in Multilayered Composites With the Markov Chain Monte Carlo Method

This paper deals with the solution of an inverse heat conduction problem, aiming at the identification of the interface thermal contact conductance, which can be directly associated to the quality of the adhesion between layers of multilayered composite materials. The inverse problem is solved within the Bayesian framework, with a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. A total variation prior is used for the spatially distributed contact conductance. The feasibility of the approach is evaluated with simulated temperature measurements for cases with contact failures of different sizes.