ABSTRACT
This chapter first considers the identification of constant parameters in diffusion processes arising from the modelling of fluid flow through a porous medium and a two-dimensional tracer dispersion problem is discussed as a physical application. Afterwards, problems of determining several unknown constant parameters in heat conduction are analyzed. An iterative nonlinear least-squares boundary element method is employed for the numerical inversion. For finite homogeneous heat conductors, it is shown that the thermal conductivity and heat capacity can uniquely and stably be retrieved from two measurements containing at least one heat flux measurement, whilst for semi-infinite conductors one heat flux and one internal temperature measurement are necessary and sufficient.
