Non-Fourier analysis of skin biothermomechanics

Biothermomechanics of skin is highly interdisciplinary, involving bioheat transfer, burn damage, biomechanics and physiology. Comprehension of the phenomena of heat transfer and related thermomechanics in skin tissue is of great importance and can contribute to a variety of medical applications. Due to the “lengthy” thermal relaxation time in biological tissue, non-Fourier thermal behaviour has been experimentally observed, attracting increasingly more attention to this phenomenon. The aim of this study is to review previous researches on the non-Fourier heat transfer process and to develop a computational approach to examine this non-Fourier process and its influence on the mechanical response in skin tissue. The dual-phase-lag (DPL) model is first used to model bioheat transfer across the tissue. Together with the thermal wave model, the non-Fourier thermomechanical behaviour of the tissue is analyzed under various surface heating boundary conditions. For single-layer tissue model, exact solutions for temperature, thermal stress and thermal damage fields are derived; for multi-layer structural models, numerical solutions are obtained with the finite difference method. Large discrepancies are found to exist amongst the predictions of Pennes model, thermal wave model and dual-phase-lag model, while different DPL bioheat transfer models give similar predictions.