This paper on "FEA Modeling of Burn Injury in Tissue Quantifies Hazard Associated with Consumer Products" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on The Evolution of Product Simulation From Established Methods to Virtual Testing & Prototyping - 24-28 April 2001, The Grand Hotel, Lake Como, Italy.

Abstract

Quantitative assessment of the ability of consumer products to cause burn injuries is a necessary step in the design of safe products. Burn injury research conducted at the RAM Consulting Research Center, has developed an experimental apparatus and analysis technique to make quantitative burn assessments of a wide variety of consumer products.
This Burn Injury Model integrates bio-simulating experimental instrumentation, Finite Element Analysis skin models, burn injury reaction kinetics, and engineering and medical peer review. This model converts the measured heat released from a product to the degree and coverage of the resulting burn.
In order to measure the heat released from a product during combustion, a bio-simulating mica plate instrumented with thermocouples is used as the local heat sink for the burning product. Fabric, for example, can be placed in close proximity to the mica plate and ignited. As the fabric burns, the temperature histories of up to 50 thermocouples are recorded. This provides an accurate measurement of the non-uniform heating of the 25 square inch area of the mica plate exposed to the combusting product.
Once the amount of heat released from the fabric is measured, this heat is applied to a virtual model of human skin through the use of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) modeling. This FEA skin model computes detailed transient thermal conduction through the skin to determine the local thermal environments during the burn insult.
Thermal burn injuries are caused by chemical reactions which take place in tissue at elevated temperatures. Once the detailed transient temperature of the skin is known, burn reaction kinetics are applied to calculate the progression of the burn reaction at various points throughout the skin. The calculated burned regions are spatially combined to quantitatively determine the volume of burned tissue, the penetration depth and thus the overall severity of the burn.