A study of the thermal response of skin tissue in Moxibustion

Abstract

Direct moxibustion is an important and widely used treatment method in traditional medical science. The use of a mathematical method to analyse direct moxibustion treatment is necessary and helpful in exploring the new direct moxibustion instruments and their standardisation. Thus, this paper aims to use a mathematical method to study direct moxibustion in skin to demonstrate a direct relationship between direct moxibustion and skin stimuli. In this paper, the transient thermal response of skin layers is analysed to study direct moxibustion using the data got from standardised method to measure the temperature of a burning moxa cone. Numerical simulations based on an appropriate finite element model are developed to predict the heat transfer, thermal damage and thermal stress distribution of barley moxa cones and jujube moxa cones in the skin tissue. The results are verified by the ancient literatures of traditional Chinese medicine and clinical application, and showed that mathematical method can be a good interface between moxa cone and skin tissue providing the numerical value basis for moxibustion.