- Author
- Chen, N. Y.
- Title
- Transient Heat and Moisture Transfer to Skin Through Thermally-Irradiated Cloth.
- Coporate
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
- Report
- THESIS, February 1959, 211 p.
- Keywords
- skin (human | moisture | clothing | thermal radiation | exposure | heat transfer | mass transfer | temperature | protective clothing | animals
- Identifiers
- discussion on the dry cloth air gap skin simulant system; heat and mass (moisture) transfer through a moist cloth air gap skin simulant system; correlation of skim simulant temperature history with burn data
- Abstract
- The study reported here was intended to further the understanding of the action of clothing in protecting skin from thermal injury resulting from exposure to high intensity thermal radiation. Efforts were centered on obtaining both experimentally and theoretically the temperature-time-depth data in skin, because it is generally agreed that these are of prime importance in the analysis of the damage processes. The experimental work involved the exposure to intense solar radiation. Of "standard" cloth samples backed by a copper-air skin simulant developed by the author in an associated program. Fine wire thermocouples inside the skin simulant supplied the experimental temperature-response data. The theoretical work treated first a dry cloth-skin simulant system, and then a moist cloth-skin simulant system. The former involved the mathematical analysis of transient heat transfer through both opaque and diathermanous cloths to skin, and the latter involved simultaneous heat and moisture transfer through cloth (again both opaque and diathermanous) to skin. Both problems were solved with the aid of the IBM-704 digital computer in the M.I.T. Computatian Center. On the basis of these results, it was concluded that: (1) the temperature response of skin placed behind a layer of over-dried cloth can be adequately estimated by the mathematical model described in the present work if the physical and optical properties of the cloth are known. (2) the temperature response of skin placed behind a layer of moist cloth can be reasonably estimated within the range of variables studied by a model in which the bulk flow of the water vapor is neglected, and molecular diffusion assumed to be the only moisture-transfer process. The inefficiency of the mathematical method of solution indicates that there is room for further improvement in the theoretical analysis.