Parameter Identification of a Linear Wave Equation from Experimental Boundary Data

Parameter identification of a drill string is studied. The system is modeled as a hyperbolic system with dynamical boundary conditions. The considered model is a wave equation with spatial dependent elasticity and viscous damping terms. The identification problem is recast as an optimization problem over an infinite-dimensional space. The developed approach ensures that the estimates of the parameters lie in a given set. A gradient descent-based algorithm is proposed to generate parameter estimates based on experimental data. A thorough comparative study with more classical algorithms is presented.