A coupled problem of heat and mass transfer applied to porous textile media surrounding the human foot

Abstract

There have been many attempts in the literature to model human thermoregulation systems in order to predict central temperature and other heat stress indicators (see [3, 9], among many others). These models depend on a wide range of variables, including individual characteristics, surrounding textile and environmental factors. The main objective of this work is to formulate a stable, realistic and versatile 2-D mathematical model describing the heat transfer of the human foot (bare foot and foot surrounded by textile materials). The novelty, but also the difficulty , lies on the theoretical multiphysics that models the textile as a porous media, involving energy transport but also mass transport of liquid water, water vapour and gas, including evaporation phenomena. The numerical solution to the global problem involves a segregated algorithm and fixed point techniques for the nonlinearities jointly with finite elements spatial discretizations. Implementation has been performed through commercial software COMSOL TM Multiphysics.