ICARUS: A code for evaluating burn injuries

A computer code, ICARUS (Injuries CAused by Radiation Upon the Skin), has been developed for evaluating time to second-degree burn injury caused by thermal radiation. This paper introduces the modeling methodology incorporated in ICARUS and illustrates the code's validity and application. ICARUS enables studies of the effects of thermal radiation on the skin and benefits assessments of the shielding effects of clothing layers. ICARUS uses a unique method of solving the complex heat transfer problem associated with simultaneous radiation, conduction, and convection in a multilayered diathermanous clothing/skin assembly, which is especially useful when coupled with the thermal responses (moisture loss, charring, shrinking, and so on) of the clothing fabrics themselves. The code is designed to run on an IBM-PC compatible.