Experimental and computational thermal analysis of partial-body cryotherapy

Abstract

During the partial body cryotherapy, human surface is cooled with gas for several minutes. For this, special heat and mass exchanger is used – a cryocabin. From a thermal engineering viewpoint, to improve this empirical treatment, detailed data are needed on the temperature and velocity of the cooling gas, as well as on the biological tissues cooling. For this, current study proposes an improved human, partial body cryotherapy simulation models and study of the partial body cryotherapy heat transfer problem in a single system “equipment-gas-biotissue” using experiment and computer simulation. For the first time the cryoexposure duration up to 420 s was analyzed. The data on the actual cooling gas temperature and velocity distributions, skin and internal biotissue temperature, bioheat flux for the considered typical gas supply mode is obtained. The impact of body mass index, external thermal resistance (body hair) and internal structure of a body parts on cooling dynamics is analyzed. This information is expected to be useful for understanding the effect-exposure correlation of the cryotherapy and in the design of the cryotherapy equipment.