Physiology-informed multi-scale design of temperature field-driven personalized porous casts

• Published in: Case studies in thermal engineering Vol. 74; p. 106985
• Main Authors: Wang, Jiangfei, Liu, Bin, Cao, Wei, Lu, Ping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2025; Elsevier
• Subjects: Personalized casts; Porous structure; Temperature field; Thermal comfort; Porous structure; Thermal comfort; Temperature field; Personalized casts
• ISSN: 2214-157X; 2214-157X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.csite.2025.106985

This study presents a physiology-informed design workflow for a temperature field-driven dual-scale topology optimization method, aiming to design personalized porous orthopedic casts with lightweight structure and enhanced thermal comfort. The proposed approach systematically addresses the limitations or drawbacks of traditional bandages such as bulkiness, stuffiness, and poor thermal comfort. By establishing functional relationship between personalized porous protectors with varying porosity distributions and their corresponding skin surface temperature fields, a mapping model between temperature fields and porosity based on infrared thermal imaging data was developed, and integrating the three-dimensional characteristics of porous structures, a macro-micro collaborative design framework is developed. At the macro level, an isothermal area-weighted random sampling method is proposed to obtain porous positions and distributions that match the skin temperature gradient distribution. At the micro level, a polar coordinate geodesic B-spline curve control method is employed to precisely control the effective area of porous cell units through parametric design, thereby constructing Temperature-driven Geodesic Voronoi Porous structures (TGVPs) with target porosity. Finite element analysis (FEA) demonstrate that the optimized cast can achieve a maximum compressive strength of 100N (with a wall shear stress percentage of 51.06 %) under a safety factor of 2 times the compressive strength of polymer bandages. Thermal comfort wearing test results show that compared TGVP cast with fully covered condition, uniformly porous cast, Voronoi strut porous cast and interactive porous cast, the optimized cast reduces temperature by 0.93 °C, 0.31 °C, 0.05 °C and 0.75 °C respectively, most closely approximating the natural state with optimal thermal comfort. The enhancement in thermal comfort of the optimized casts has been validated across different subjects' upper limbs, lower limbs, and trunk regions, demonstrating the method's effectiveness and universality. [Display omitted]