Understanding of heat transfer during skin contact with cooler or hotter objects is important for design of portable electronics, thermal displays, artificial hands, haptic devices, and wearable thermal systems as well as for setting safety standards in a variety of occupational settings. So far we have developed new analytical model for thermal resistance posed by direct human skin-object contact (Rykaczewski, Temperature, 2019) and applied this model in simulations of finger contact cooling quantification using interfacial thermocouple (Rykaczewski and Dhanote Journal of Thermal Biology, 2022). We are currently collaborating with Prof. Davide Filingeri on thermomechanical, frictional, and perceptive aspects of direct skin-object contacts.
