Search

The uneven distribution of the baby incubator temperature can cause the temperature in the baby incubator to be different at each point. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of the door closed and opened to the temperature at each point of sensor placement that has been determined. The study was conducted as an experimental research design. In this experiment, an Incu Analyzer comparison was used as a calibrator unit, a baby skin temperature thermistor sensor, and four LM35 sensors for baby incubator room temperature with one LM35 sensor as a PID control system carried out by trial-and-error method. Based on the results of measurements was made with the design, when the chamber is open, it produces an average error value of T1 4.083%, T2 6.06%, T3 3.78%, T4 4.88%, and T5 1.48%, while when the chamber is closed, it produces an average error value T1 0.75. %, T2 0.88%, T3 1.15%, T4 0.74%, and T5 0.87%. Measurement of skin temperature using a thermometer has an average error value of 1.1%. The results showed that uneven heat transfer, lack of air distribution, different sensor placements at each point, and non-standard chamber sizes were factors that were uneven at each point. Based on the results of the study, it was found that the use of a working system on this device can be implemented to control the temperature of the baby incubator by knowing the temperature distribution at each point

Neonates, especially preterm and sick infants, face difficulty controlling their body temperature. Thus, they are nursed inside incubators in order to improve their hygrothermal condition and monitor their body temperature as well as other vital signs. The complex processes of heat and mass transfer between the neonates and the surrounding air and surfaces are the key concerns essential to their growth and survival. Several methods are used in order to better understand the physical phenomena of dry and latent heat losses from neonates and the body-environment interaction occurring during transient clinical processes and in thermoneutrality, which is the optimum thermal environment for neonates nursed inside incubators. These methods can be classified into three main categories: bioheat modeling, computational fluid dynamics and experimental studies. The objective of these methods is to analyze the effect of different ambient conditions, such as air temperature and humidity, incubator wall temperatures and air flow, on the dry heat losses by convection, conduction and radiation and on latent heat losses due to skin evaporation and respiratory process. The main indicators are the metabolic heat generation, skin and core body temperatures. Moreover, based on these methods, different techniques are proposed to enhance the incubator hygrothermal conditions. All these issues are reviewed in this paper and some future recommendations are drawn.

Thermoregulation and bioheat models for preterm neonates are used to study heat transfer inside infant incubators. These models need anatomically specific radiation and convection heat transfer coefficients for different body segments. In the present study, numerical simulations are performed for a preterm neonate consisting of 5 body segments (head, arms, trunk, back and legs) placed inside an incubator. The studies are conducted for varying incubator inlet temperature ranging between 29 and 35 °C and different air flowrates between 5 and 50 L/min. It is found that the heat transfer process depends mainly on the incubator air temperature. Meanwhile, it is shown that the incubator air flow rate does not affect significantly the convective heat transfer process. Thus, it is concluded that the heat transfer between the incubator air and the infant skin is caused by natural convection. The effect of the flow structure on the temperature distribution is studied and correlations for the radiative and convective heat transfer coefficients are obtained for each body segment. The radiative heat transfer coefficient varies between 2.2 and 6.2 W/m2K while the convective heat transfer coefficient varies between 2.6 and 4.7 W/m2K. The results are validated against experimental data from the open literature. A thermoregulation model is also developed taking into consideration heat and mass losses due to skin evaporation and respiration. This model is used to quantify the heat balance in preterm neonates.