Solving elliptic Cauchy problems and the identification of nonlinear corrosion

We deal with an inverse problem arising in corrosion detection. The presence of corrosion damage is modeled by a nonlinear boundary condition on the inaccessible portion of the metal specimen. We propose a method for the approximate reconstruction of such a nonlinearity. A crucial step of this procedure, which encapsulates the major cause of the ill-posedness of the problem, consists of the solution of a Cauchy problem for an elliptic equation. For this purpose we propose an SVD approach.