Computer Simulation of Post-Burn Skin

Severely burned skin can exhibit serious contractions that may negatively impact the mobility of joints of patients. The method deals with post-burn evolution of skin, in which one considers the balance of momentum, cells, collagen and chemokines. The balances are represented in terms of partial differential equations, of which the solution is approximated by the use of numerical techniques. These techniques combine finite element discretization, time integration and root finding problem to solve the resulting nonlinear algebraic equations. Since many of the input parameters are unknown, uncertainty assessment is done in order to obtain output results in terms of estimations of probability distributions. The main output variables are the wound area and total dermal stress energy as a function of time after injury, since these parameters quantify the extent of dermal contraction.