Skin thermal injury prediction with strain energy

A three-dimensional model is presented for the quantitative prediction of skin injury resulting from certain thermal exposure on the surface. The model is based on the skin damage equation proposed by Henriques and Moritz for the process of protein denaturation. Different from the standard Arrhenius model for protein damage rate, in which the activation energy includes chemical reaction only, strain energy of tissue due to thermal stress is also considered in the current model. Skin thermal response is modeled using the bioheat transfer equation by including water diffusion on the skin surface, and the corresponding thermal stress is predicted using the modified Duhamel-Neuman equation. Strain energy is then obtained by the stress-strain relation. The extent of burn injury is computed from the transient temperature solution and the effect of strain energy on skin damage is investigated. The time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs) are discretized using Crank-Nicholson finite difference scheme and the resulting sparse linear systems are solved iteratively.