Application of particle swarm optimization to the identification of thermal property parameters of porous media

An identification method of thermal property parameters of porous media by a new particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed. This method improves the selection method of initial interval and fitness function, based on inheriting the global best particle, keep the diversity of population, let the calculation skip the local optimization, so that reach the goal of solving the parameters precisely. Measuring results indicate, inverse the thermal conductivity parameters and thermal diffusion coefficient of porous media like water and sand by this method and substitute the parameters into the model, the maximum relative differences of temperature are 4.83% and 2.19%. The results indicate, this method has good identification ability to thermal property parameters of porous media and it is a parameters identification method with good accuracy and reliability.