A combined study of heat and mass transfer in a double-walled infant incubator

The main objective of this study is to investigate the major physical processes taking place inside an infant incubator, after modifications have been made to the interior chamber. Additional screens (double walls) are commonly used in modern incubators to decrease radiation heat losses from the infant child placed inside the incubator. However, these improvements affect the flow and temperature fields inside the incubator. The present study investigates the effect of these modifications on the convective heat flux from the infant’s body to the surrounding environment inside the incubator. A combined analysis of airflow and heat transfer due to conduction, convection, radiation and evaporation has been performed, in order to calculate the temperature and velocity fields inside the incubator before and after the design modification. Due to the geometrical complexity of the model, CAD applications were used to generate a computer-based model. All numerical calculations have been performed using the commercial CFD package Fluent, together with in-house routines used for managing purposes and User-Defined Functions which extend the basic solver capabilities. The results obtained were numerically verified as well as compared with results published in the literature.