One-dimensional continuously distributed sensors for thermophysical fields: Method of measurement, model, and numerical algorithm

•One dimensional continuously distributed sensor (CDS) is proposed.•The pulse method allows CDS to measure space distributions of physical fields.•The method is based on the solution of inverse operator problem.•Inverse operator problem is reduced to the problem of optimal control.•The numerical experiments shows effectiveness of CDS for distributed measurements. Continuously distributed sensors (CDS) disclose a principally new way to provide space distribution measurements for different physical fields, such as temperature, velocity and light intensity fields. The design of one-dimensional CDS and corresponding pulse measurement method are proposed. The numerical algorithm implementing the pulse measurement method are obtained based on inverse operator problem reduced to the optimal control of parabolic partial differential equation coefficients. The algorithm has been numerically studied for two methods of regularization: Tikhonov and iterative. The results of the numerical simulations show that for the low level of the experimental noise (0.1–0.5%) the proposed algorithm is able to restore the space distribution of the measuring physical field with 0.6–4% accuracy. It is shown that appropriative choice of materials for microfilm CDS allows to obtain the electrical relaxation time within the range 10−2–10−5 s, within which the physical fields under measurement could be considered as quasistatic.