Variational finite element approach to study the thermal stress in multi-layered human head

Abstract

The human head is one of the most sensitive parts of human body due to the fact that it contains brain. Any abnormality in the functioning of brain may disturb the entire system. One of the disturbing factors of brain is thermal stress. Thus, it is imperative to study the effects of thermal stress on human head at various environmental conditions. For the thermoregulation process, the human head is considered to be a structure of four layers viz.; brain, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), skull and scalp. A mathematical model has been formulated to estimate the variation of temperature at these layers. The model is based on radial form of bio-heat equation with the appropriate boundary conditions and has been solved by variational finite element method. The rate of metabolic heat generation and thermal conductivity in this study have been assumed to be heterogeneous. The results were compared with the experimental studies for their coincidence and it has been observed theoretically and experimentally that the human head has greater resistance to compete with the thermal stress up to large extent.