Development of an Automated Pressure Sensitive Thermesthesiometer and Its Application in Characterizing the Thermal Response of Human Tissue with Respect to Warm Surfaces

Abstract

An advanced thermesthesiometer has been developed to measure the heat flux, touch-force, and internal temperature profile of a simulated body part coming into contact with a warm surface. A suitably chosen material with properties resembling those of human tissue is used for bare skin simulation and is thermally regulated using a programmable logic controller (PLC). An automated driving mechanism provides variable touch-occurrences and pressures over specially engineered test-surfaces with varying effusivities and surface roughness. Each test-surface is thermally regulated at a specific temperature to aid in quantifying prior research on human subject testing and pain threshold measurements. This study not only emphasizes the instrument design but also demonstrates its potential use in human-subjective feedback testing with respect to steady state and transient heat transfer processes.