Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Thermal Dynamics of Steinhart–Hart Negative Temperature Coefficient Thermistors

Abstract

The temperature-dependent dynamics of a negative temperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor conducting variable electric current is modeled using the differential approach. The thermistor is assumed to follow the Steinhart–Hart resistance-temperature equation. The developed mathematical model consists of a nonlinear differential-algebraic equations system, and it was analyzed by the Adomian decomposition method (ADM) and its time-marching version known as the multistage Adomian decomposition method (MADM) as well as the Dormand–Prince (DP) numerical method. Five sets of experiments were conducted on five different NTC thermistors and the laboratory measurements were compared with the model predictions. It is demonstrated that the proposed model, when combined with the MADM, can accurately simulate the thermal behavior of the NTC thermistors. The MADM reproduces the experimental temperature dynamics of the five NTC thermistors with an average absolute relative error of about 2.601% while the corresponding errors for the DP method and the classic ADM are 8.122% and 51.255%, respectively. Also, it is shown that the MADM is highly efficient in terms of computational efficiency and it is approximately 6.5 times faster than the classic DP method, when tuned appropriately.