SST K-ω based air flow and heat transfer assessment in an infant incubator

Neonatal incubators provide an artificial thermal environment to maintain the thermoregulation of premature babies. Several studies revealed the          dry and latent heat exchange estimation between the newborn's body and the surrounding environment. Heat transfer due to convection is leading over the thermal radiation in incubators. The aim of this article is to study the airflow modeling and heat transfer coefficient over an infant’s body inside the incubator. For this purpose, an experiment and a numerical simulation are carried out to develop the methodology, and subsequently computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is accomplished to evaluate the heat transfer coefficient of a preterm infant. By means of the shear stress transport (SST K-ω) turbulence model, 3-D computational, models are numerically studied using the commercial CFD tool Star CCM+. Flow visualization reveals that a large-scale flow circulation pattern is produced in the mean region of the enclosed chamber, and small-scale eddies are generated at corners and close to the walls. The numerical results obtained for heat transfer assessment in the present study are validated with experimental and numerical results available in biomedical open literature.