TEMPERATURE SURGES IN CURRENT-LIMITING CIRCUIT DEVICES

This paper studies the problem of heat transfer in a thermistor, which is used as a switching device in electronic circuits. The temperature field is coupled to the current flow by ohmic heating in the device, and the problem is rendered highly nonlinear by a very rapid variation of electrical conductivity with temperature. Approximate methods based on high activation energy asymptotics are developed to describe the transient heat flow, which occurs when the circuit is switched on. In particular, it is found that a transient "surge" phenomenon (akin to thermal runaway, but self-saturating) occurs, and we conjecture that this phenomenon may be associated with cracking of thermistors, which sometimes occurs during operation.