Modelling of Heat Transfer

Heat transfer is essential to maintaining a thennal balance. While it is generally understood that the passive flow of heat is in a direction from high to low temperature, the active transfer of heat via blood flow plays a very important role in thermoregulation. The fonner mechanism is labelled conductive heat transfer while the latter is labelled convective and is the primary means of transferring heat between different body segments (eg. trunk to extremities). Both mechanisms are inherently involved and very complex to isolate. This paper will discuss each of these mechanisms in a modelling context and refer exclusively to the limb segments of the body for application. Heat transfer with the environment will not be considered.