Comment on the Marshall-Hoare-Henssge model for estimating the time since death

Tie Wei; John Abraham; Yanxing Wang

doi:10.1111/1556-4029.15218

Comment on the Marshall-Hoare-Henssge model for estimating the time since death

J Forensic Sci. 2023 Mar;68(2):676-681. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.15218. Epub 2023 Feb 8.

Authors

Tie Wei¹, John Abraham², Yanxing Wang³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, USA.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA.

PMID: 36752315
DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.15218

Abstract

Timewise temperature variations in objects that are undergoing unsteady heating or cooling is a commonly encountered problem in the thermal sciences. One particular area of application is the cooling of a body post-death and the use of body temperatures to estimate the time of death. Here, a new approach based on the theory of transient heat transfer is formulated to allow efficient calculation of unsteady conduction problems. The theoretically derived unsteady temperature models are compared with experimentally based correlations (the Marshall-Hoare-Henssge model). The two approaches are found to agree very well. With this new theoretically based approach, timewise temperature variation can be calculated for both large and small Biot number transient problems.

Keywords: Marshall-Hoare model; postmortal temperature plateau; time of death estimation; transient heat conduction.