Determination of two unknown thermal coefficients through an inverse one-phase fractional Stefan problem

Abstract

Abstract We consider a semi-infinite one-dimensional phase-change material with two unknown constant thermal coefficients among the latent heat per unit mass, the specific heat, the mass density and the thermal conductivity. Aiming at the determination of them, we consider an inverse one-phase Stefan problem with an over-specified condition at the fixed boundary and a known evolution for the moving boundary. We assume that it is given by a sharp front and we consider a time fractional derivative of order α (0 < α < 1) in the Caputo sense to represent the temporal evolution of the temperature as well as the moving boundary. This might be interpreted as the consideration of latent-heat memory effects in the development of the phase-change process. According to the choice of the unknown thermal coefficients, six inverse fractional Stefan problems arise. For each of them, we determine necessary and sufficient conditions on data to obtain the existence and uniqueness of a solution of similarity type. Moreover, we present explicit expressions for the temperature and the unknown thermal coefficients. Finally, we show that the results for the classical statement of this problem, associated with α = 1, are obtained through the fractional model when α → 1—.