Boundary element method with bioheat equation for skin burn injury

Burns are second to vehicle crashes as the leading cause of non-intentional injury deaths in the United States. The survival of a burn patient actually depends on the seriousness of the burn. It is important to understand the physiology of burns for a successful treatment of a burn patient. This has prompted researchers to conduct investigations both numerically and experimentally to understand the thermal behaviour of the human skin when subjected to heat injury. In this study, a model of the human skin is developed where the steady state temperature during burns is simulated using the boundary element method (BEM). The BEM is used since it requires boundary only discretion and thus, reduces the requirement of high computer memory. The skin is modeled as three layered in axisymmetric coordinates. The three layers are the epidermis (uppermost), dermis (middle) and subcutaneous fat. Burning is applied via a heating disk which is assumed to be at constant temperature. The results predicted by the BEM model showed very good agreement with the results obtained using the finite element method (FEM). The good agreement despite using only linear elements as compared to quadratic elements in the FEM model shows the versatility of the BEM. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate how changes in the values of certain skin variables such as the thermal conductivity and environmental conditions like the ambient convection coefficient affect the temperature distribution inside the skin. The Taguchi method was also applied to identify the combination of parameters which produces the largest increase in skin temperature during burns.