Heat conduction in porcine muscle and blood: experiments and time-fractional telegraph equation model

Abstract

This paper presents experimental evidence for the damped-hyperbolic nature of transient heat conduction in porcine muscle tissue and blood. An examination of integer order and Maxwell–Cattaneo heat conduction models indicates that the latter, in effect resulting in a time-fractional telegraph (TFT) equation, provides the best fit to transient heat phenomena in such materials. The numerical method is verified on Dirichlet and Neumann initial boundary value problems using existing analytical results. Overall, the TFT equation captures the wave-like nature of heat conduction and temperature profiles obtained in experiments, while reducing the need for further tunable parameters.