Abstract: This paper presents a hybrid technique for simultaneous estimation of parameter and function in inverse heat conduction problems. No prior information is used for the functional form of the heat flux in the present study. The scheme presented here is a combination of two different classical methods: The Variable Metric Method (VMM) and Gauss Method (GM). The determination of the unknown thermal coefficients includes two steps per iteration of the estimation algorithm: the function estimation step; and the parameter estimation step. VMM and GM are used to handle function estimation and parameter estimation problems, respectively. It is shown via simulated experiment that unknown quantities can be obtained with reasonable accuracy using this method despite existing noise in the measurement data
