Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Journal of Thermal Sciences, cilt.227, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Rayleigh wave propagation in skin tissue under pulsed laser heating is at the heart of advancing biomedical applications such as therapeutic ultrasonics, elastography, and laser-assisted surgery. This paper presents an integrated fractional-order thermo-viscoelastic model that combines Caputo-type three-phase-lag (TPL) heat conduction, Eringen's nonlocal elasticity, hydrostatic prestress, rotational motions, and pulsed laser thermal loading a combination that has not been addressed in the existing literature. The coupled partial differential equations are solved analytically for a homogeneous, isotropic, viscoelastic half-space, resulting in a sixth-degree characteristic equation whose admissible roots satisfy the surface wave attenuation conditions. Variance-based Sobol Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) with N=104 Latin Hypercube samples systematically assess the relative importance of nine model parameters for four quantities of interest: phase velocity, attenuation coefficient, penetration depth, and specific heat loss. The parameter ranges are anchored to experimental data for skin tissue where available. The results indicate that the laser pulse duration (tp) is the dominant factor for penetration depth (93% variance contribution) and phase velocity (84%), while the fractional order (α) is the dominant factor for attenuation (78%). Mechanical nonlocality (ϵ1) is always more influential than thermal nonlocality (ϵ2). The model correctly captures the classical Rayleigh wave speed in the two limiting scenarios, thus validating the model. A quantitative validation table is provided, and trends are compared with experimental elastography and photoacoustic studies. The low-sensitivity parameters are fixed to achieve model reduction with less than 3% loss of accuracy. The results offer a quantitative basis for optimizing laser pulse duration and fractional tissue properties to improve thermal dose control, diagnostic accuracy in elastography, and safety margins in laser-based medical interventions. The paper recognizes the following limitations: the model assumes homogeneous tissue, and there is no direct experimental validation.