Thermal management of flexible wearable electronic devices integrated with human skin considering clothing effect

Abstract

The flexible wearable electronic devices can be directly integrated with human skin to monitor the vital signs of human body, which will be covered with clothes. An analytical model is developed in this paper to study the flexible wearable electronic devices integrated with human skin considering clothing effect. The coupling model of Pennes bio-heat transfer equation and Fourier heat conduction equation is adopted to consider the thermal behavior of the whole system. The clothes are modeled as a kind of composite material consisting of clothing fibers and air under the complicated boundary condition including convection, conduction and radiation between the environment. The predicted analytical temperature distribution of the system is validated by finite element analysis (FEA). And the influences of systematic parameters on characteristic temperatures, i.e., the temperature of electronic component and the maximum temperature at the device/skin interface are investigated comprehensively to discuss the design of heat dissipation and the clothing effect. The results presented are able to provide guidelines for the thermal management of flexible wearable electronic devices under real working conditions.