Optimal sensor location for inverse heat conduction problem in multilayered building walls

The estimation of wall thermal properties through an inverse problem procedure enables to increase the reliability of the model predictions for building energy efficiency. Nevertheless, it requires defining an experimental campaign to obtain on-site observations for existing buildings. The quality of the estimated parameter strongly depends on the quality of the experimental data used for the parameter identification. Pronzato highlights the relation between the experiment design and the precision of the retrieved parameters. The design of experiments enables to search for the optimal measurement plan. It ensures the highest precision of the parameter to be estimated. For on-site measurement in buildings, the design of experiments seeks to answer the following questions: How many sensors do we need? What is the sensor position χ in the wall?

The Optimal Experiment Design (OED) methodology enables us to answer those questions. For example, Nenamorokov et al. searched the OED for the estimation of radiation properties. Artyukhin and Budnik inspected the optimal sensor location and their quantity in the inverse heat conduction boundary problem. More recently the optimal heating period and the duration of the experiment were investigated for the thermal conductivity estimation in building walls. In this paper, the OED methodology is used to answer the above-mentioned questions for a real case study. The unknown parameter is the thermal conductivity of each wall layer of an existing French house.