Cooling and monitoring skin temperature

[ko99]

I originally sent this to the heat transfer forum, but maybe this forum is more appropriate.

Does anyone have any experience/pointers/insights on how to cool and maintain skin below it's normal temperature?

A small surface area of skin (~3x3mm) must be maintained at 28C indefinitely. I'd like to create a software model. This would be easy if skin behaved like any solid material of known conductivity, but I've never worked with live human tissue and thanks to pores, skin types, blood circulation, and probably other constantly changing thermal properties, I don't know how to characterize it. Any suggestions?

Accurately monitoring skin temperature in the cooled area is another issue. Any suggestions are most welcome.

Kevin O'Connor

http://www.ECooling.biz

 

[IRstuff]

Human or piglet?

Aside from complete immersion in 28°C water bath, the most obvious way is a direct-contact TEC with closed loop control with either a thermocouple on the TEC or injected into the skin.

It's been over 7 years since I looked, but there are syringe-injectable thermocouples with pretty fast (<20ms) response times available.

TTFN

 

[ko99]

It's human skin. I'm thinking TEC, too. I didn't know about injectable thermocouples. Thanks.

Kevin O'Connor

http://www.ECooling.biz

 

[IRstuff]

Fiber-optic temperature sensors might be another approach

TTFN

 

[andyc0204]

Google for &quot;thermal clearance bloodflow&quot; and you should find some info. This is a difficult thing to achieve as the body will dynamically regulate its temperature.