Thermal recovery of the skin after cooling.

A theoretical model of the skin is used to study the thermal recovery of the skin temperature after cooling. The analytical solution of the partial differential equation describing this model shows that recovery curves can be approximated by a two-exponential curve or even by a mono-exponential curve when the data from the first two minutes are omitted. With this model, it is possible to study the influence of the blood flow and the thermal conductivity lambda of the skin on the steady-state temperature and the decay constants mun. New experiments will be carried out to verify the relation between mu1, mu2 and the blood flow but now correcting for the influence of lambda, as predicted by the model.