Análise sistemática dos processos de transferência de calor na instrumentação forense atual: implicações e aplicações

Abstract

Modern forensic science faces a structural problem: a significant portion of errors in forensic analyses and resulting wrongful convictions stems not from isolated equipment failures, but from a fragile understanding of the physical phenomena underlying forensic instrumentation. In this context, heat transfer emerges as a fundamental principle permeating the main instruments used by forensic engineering, making its in-depth comprehension by experts and researchers essential. Addressing this gap, this study aimed to conduct a systematic analysis of the scientific literature on heat transfer processes applied to forensic instrumentation, seeking to identify how these phenomena contribute to the precision and efficacy of expert analyses and what limitations still compromise their proper use. To this end, the ProKnow-C instrument was adopted, guiding the selection and critical analysis of the literature through searches in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, using search equations combining terms from the thermodynamic and forensic fields. From 568 records, after the elimination of duplicate articles, application of the Pareto Principle for scientific recognition, and filtering by thematic alignment, a definitive bibliographic portfolio of 45 articles was consolidated, which was subjected to bibliometric analysis using the Bibliometrix package and qualitative systemic analysis. The results showed that forensic instrumentation is organized around three thermodynamic axes: in the first, rigorously controlled conduction establishes thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry as the standard for quantifying activation energies in areas such as fire investigation, forensic pedology, and lithium-ion battery analysis; in the second, the heat transfer employed by analytical pyrolysis and direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry enables the decoding of macromolecular traces of fibers, dyes, polymers, and biological matrices; in the third, computational fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, and infrared thermography make it possible to reconstruct the complete thermodynamic history of fires and structural collapses. Relevant gaps were also identified, such as the concealment of evidence by the abrupt cooling promoted by firefighting, the operational restrictions of hyphenated instruments, and the exclusion of rare markers by statistical chemometric criteria. The bibliometric analysis revealed that scientific production is fragmented into thirteen isolated clusters, geographically concentrated in China and the United States. It is concluded that heat transfer is, simultaneously, the phenomenon that degrades forensic traces and the tool that forensic instrumentation uses to reconstruct them, and that a thorough understanding of this duality is a necessary condition to reduce expert errors and wrongful convictions.