On finding a cavity in a thermoelastic body using a single displacement measurement over a finite time interval on the surface of the body

Abstract

A mathematical formulation of an estimation problem of a cavity inside a three-dimensional thermoelastic body using time domain data is considered. The governing equation of the problem is given by a system of equations in the linear theory of thermoelasticity which is a coupled system of the elastic wave and heat equations. A new version of the enclosure method in the time domain which is originally developed for the classical wave equation is established. For a comparison, the results in the decoupled case are also given.