Modeling and Simulation of Heat Transfer Phenomenon from Infant Radiant Warmer for a Newborn Baby

Abstract

Nowadays death of a newborn baby due to hypothermia is one of the vital factors. To overcome the problem infant radiant warmer has been used in hospitals which helps to prevent excessive heat loss of the baby by maintaining a proper temperature. However, in practice, it is critical to regulating proper thermal stability that is exactly required for a premature baby to conquer the heat loss problem. In this study, we have established a computational model for heat transfer analysis using the Finite Element Method. The heat transfer to the surrounding area skin of newborn with the help of Infant Radiant Warmer (IRW) is simulated to study the best range of light source to overcome the hypothermia. We simulate the efficiency and effect of the infant radiant of the thermal radiation using COMSOL Multiphysics program. For this simulation, we considered the distance between the infant’s mattress and the bottom surface of the heater unit as 70 cm and the heater power 500 watts, and 600 watts. We have investigated mattress temperature, baby temperature and surface radiosity which are important to understand to increase newborn baby body temperature. It is found that the temperature of mattress raises up to 36 - 36.5 degrees Celsius and skin temperature raises up to 37 - 37.5 degrees Celsius.