Hyperbolic model of thermal interactions in a system biological tissue—protective clothing subjected to an external heat source

Abstract

The numerical modeling of thermal processes in domain of biological tissue (the male thigh) secured by multilayered protective clothing being in the thermal contact with the environment is discussed. The thigh is treated as the nonhomogeneous domain in which the sub-domains of skin tissue, fat, muscle, bone and blood vessels are distinguished. Between the protective clothing and skin tissue the air gap is taken into account. The heat transfer is described by the system of hyperbolic Cattaneo–Vernotte equations (for the tissue sub-domains) and parabolic Fourier equations (for the remaining sub-domains). The process of external heating is determined by the appropriate boundary condition and the internal heat source (in the fabric sub-domain) related to the absorption of incident thermal radiation. The mathematical model is solved numerically using the control volume method, while the considered sub-domains (the 2 D problem) are covered by the Voronoi meshes. In the final part of the article, the example of computations is presented.