Development and application of numerical model of thermal sensors for thermal protective clothing evaluation based on CFD simulation

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the heat transfer effect of copper sensor and skin simulant on skin.Design/methodology/approachFor the sensor, the physical and mathematical models of the thermal sensors were used to obtain the definite conditions in the heat transfer process of the sensor, and the heat transfer models of the two sensors were developed and solved respectively by using ANSYS WORKBENCH 19.0 software. The simulation results were compared with the experimental test results. For the skin, the numerical model of the skin model was developed and calculated. Finally, the heat transfer simulation performance of the two sensors was analyzed.FindingsIt is concluded that the copper sensor is more stable than the skin simulant, but the material and structure of the skin simulant is more suitable for skin simulation. The skin simulant better simulates the skin heat transfer. For all the factors in the model, the thermal properties of the material and the heat flux level are the key factors. The convective heat transfer coefficient, radiation heat transfer rate and the initial temperature have little influence on the results, which can be ignored.Research limitations/implicationsThe results show that there are still some differences between the experimental and numerical simulation values of the skin simulant. In the future, the thermal parameters of skin simulant and the influence of the thermocouple adhesion should be further examined during the calibration process.Practical implicationsThe results suggest that the skin simulant needs to be further calibrated, especially for the thermal properties. The copper sensor on the flame manikin can be replaced by the skin simulant with higher accuracy, which will be helpful to improve the accuracy of performance evaluation of thermal protective clothing.Social implicationsThe application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology can help to analyze the heat transfer simulation mechanism of thermal sensor, explore the influence of thermal performance of thermal sensor on skin simulation, provide basis for the development of thermal sensor and improve the application system of thermal sensor. Based on the current research status, this paper studies the internal heat transfer of the sensor through the numerical modeling of the copper sensor and skin simulant, so as to analyze the effect of the sensor simulating skin and the reasons for the difference.Originality/valueIn this paper, the sensor itself is numerically modeled and the heat transfer inside the sensor is studied.