A regularization method for solving the radially symmetric backward heat conduction problem

This work is devoted to solving the radially symmetric backward heat conduction problem, starting from the final temperature distribution. The problem is ill-posed: the solution (if it exists) does not depend continuously on the given data. A modified Tikhonov regularization method is proposed for solving this inverse problem. A quite sharp estimate of the error between the approximate solution and the exact solution is obtained with a suitable choice of regularization parameter. A numerical example is presented to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the method. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.