Establishing the moisture transport kinetics in porcine skin
The current paper focuses on development of an accurate mathematical model that can accurately replicate the actual transport of moisture through porcine skin, which will be obtained from simple drying experiments. The details pertaining to these experiments will be described here in detail. The mathematical models developed for simulating the moisture transport is based on the 1D Fickian diffusion equation. However, several modifications to the ID Fickian diffusion equation have been made such as shrinkage effect, water content dependence on diffusivity etc, and predicted results compared with the experimental ones. The basis for introducing these modifications will also be discussed in this paper. All the simulations are performed using MATLAB 7.0.4 software from Mathworks.Inc (USA).