Inaccuracies in the inverse heat conduction problem solution and their effect on the estimation of heat fluxes during quenching

•Solving the Inverse Heat Conduction Problem (IHCP) is a common approach to estimate the surface heat fluxes involved in transient, quenching experiments.•It is well known that ambiguities are inherent to IHCPs and that uncertainties can be large.•A “virtual experiment” approach is followed to analyze the accuracy of the heat flux estimations in transient, quenching experiments.•The results show that there are unavoidable issues inherent to quenching experiments that significantly overestimate the surface temperature in the initial instants of the experiment.•Therefore, it is not recommended to relate the surface temperature estimations and boiling regime observations in the first instants of experiments. Solving the Inverse Heat Conduction Problem (IHCP) is a common approach to estimate the surface heat fluxes involved in transient, quenching experiments. The inverse problem presents several challenges, such as accounting for the non-uniqueness of its solution, for the effects of noise, or for other practical issues affecting the experimental input data, such as the thermal contact of the internal temperature sensors. In this paper, possible sources of inaccuracy in the IHCP solution and their effect on the estimated surface heat flux in experiments on quenching by water jet impingement are systematically investigated. A “virtual experiment” approach is followed to analyze the effect of a noise cancelling technique, the ambiguity in initial conditions and the quality of the thermocouple contact on the accuracy of the heat flux estimations. The results show that the invalid assumption of perfect thermal contact between thermocouple and test plate leads to overestimation of surface temperature in the initial stages of quenching. Based on these results, two measures are proposed to avoid misinterpretation of quenching heat flux estimations when solving the IHCP.