Key concepts

• Measuring temperature
• Types of temperature sensors
• Thermistor
• Integrated silicon linear sensor
• Thermocouple
• Resistive temperature detector (RTD)
• Choosing a temperature sensor
• Calibrating temperature sensors
• Thermal system transient response
 What is temperature?

"Temperature is a measure of the tendency of an object to spontaneously give

up energy to its surroundings. When two objects are in thermal contact, the one
that tends to spontaneously lose energy is at the higher temperature.“
 Desirable temperature sensor characteristics

Fast response Accurate

Repeatable

Easy Wide
Temperature
calibration temperature
sensor
range
Cost
Simple relationship
Sensor output → temperature
 Thermocouple
• Thermocouple – a two-terminal element consisting of two dissimilar
metal wires joined at the end.
• In Thermocouple the electrical potential difference is produced due to
temperature difference across its terminals. So, thermocouple is a
temperature transducer. It is the element that transforms the output of the
sensing element into electrical quantity.
 Thermocouples con…
• Seebeck effect
• If two wires of dissimilar metals are joined at both ends and one end is heated,
current will flow.
• If the circuit is broken, there will be an open circuit voltage across the wires.
• Voltage is a function of temperature and metal types.
• For small dt’s, the relationship with temperature is linear

Δ𝑉 = 𝛼Δ𝑇
• For larger dt’s, non-linearities may occur.
 The Seebeck Effect con…
• Seebeck Effect – A conductor generates a voltage when it is
subjected to a temperature gradient
• Measuring this voltage requires the use of a second conductor material
• The other material needs to be composed of a different material
Nickel-Chromium
The relationship + Alloy
between The voltage difference of the
temperature two dissimilar metals can be
difference and
voltage varies
measured and related to the VS = 𝛼ΔT
with materials corresponding temperature
gradient
- Copper-Nickel
Alloy
 Measuring Temperature
• To measure temperature using a thermocouple, you can’t just connect
the thermocouple to a measurement system (e.g. voltmeter)
• The voltage measured by your system is proportional to the
temperature difference between the primary junction (hot junction)
and the junction where the voltage is being measured (Ref junction)

To determine the You need to

absolute know the
temperature at temperature at
the hot the Ref junction!
junction… How can we determine
the temperature at the
SOURCE: http://www.pcbheaven.com/wikipages/images/thermocouples_1271330366.png
reference junction?
 Measuring the thermocouple voltage
• If you attach the thermocouple directly to a voltmeter, you will have
problems.

• You have just created another junction! Your displayed voltage will be
proportional to the difference between J1 and J2 (and hence T1 and T2). Note
that this is “type T” thermocouple.
 External reference junction

• A solution is to put J2 in an ice-bath; then you know T2, and

your output voltage will be proportional to T1-T2.
 Other types of thermocouples
• Many thermocouples don’t have one copper wire. Shown below is a “type
J” thermocouple.

• If the two terminals aren’t at the same temperature, this also creates an
error.
 Isothermal block
• The block is an electrical insulator but good heat conductor. This way the
voltages for J3 and J4 cancel out. Thermocouple data acquisition set-ups
include these isothermal blocks.

• If we eliminate the ice-bath, then the isothermal block temperature is our

reference temperature
V =  (T1 − Tblock )
 Ice Bath Method (Forcing a Temperature)
• Thermocouples measure the voltage difference between two points
• To know the absolute temperature at the hot junction, one must know the
temperature at the Ref junction
• NIST thermocouple reference tables are
generated with Tref = 0 oC

Vmeas = V(Thot) – V(Tref)

V(Thot) = Vmeas + V(Tref)

If we know the voltage-temperature

relationship of our thermocouple, we could
determine the temperature at the hot junction
 Software compensation

• How can we find the temperature of the block? Use a thermistor or RTD.
• Once the temperature is known, the voltage associated with that
temperature can be subtracted off.
• Then why use thermocouples at all?
• Thermocouples are cheaper, smaller, more flexible and rugged, and
operate over a wider temperature range.
• Most data acquisition systems have software compensation built in. To use
LabVIEW, you'll need to know if you have a thermistor or RTD.
 Hardware compensation

• With hardware compensation, the temperature of the isothermal block again is

measured, and then a battery is used to cancel out the voltage of the reference
junction.
• This is also called an “electronic ice point reference”. With this reference, you
can use a normal voltmeter instead of a thermocouple reader. You need a separate
ice-point reference for every type of thermocouple.
Thermocouple types

If you do your own

calibration, you can
usually improve on the
listed uncertainties.
 Thermocouple types, cont…
• Type B – very poor below 50ºc; reference junction temperature not important
since voltage output is about the same from 0 to 42 ºc
• Type E – good for low temperatures since dv/dt (a) is high for low temperatures
• Type J – cheap because one wire is iron; high sensitivity but also high
uncertainty (iron impurities cause inaccuracy)
• Type T – good accuracy but low max temperature (400 ºc); one lead is copper,
making connections easier; watch for heat being conducted along the copper
wire, changing your surface temp
• Type K – popular type since it has decent accuracy and a wide temperature
range; some instability (drift) over time
• Type N – most stable over time when exposed to elevated temperatures for long
periods
 Nonlinearity in the Seebeck Coefficient

VS = αΔT
• Thermocouple output
voltages are highly
nonlinear
• The Seebeck coefficient
can vary by a factor of 3 or
more over the operating
temperature range of the
thermocouples
Temperature Conversion Equation
T = a0 + a1V + a2V2 + …. + anVn
 Look-Up Table for a Type T Thermocouple
Voltage difference of the hot and cold junctions: VD = 3.409 mV
What is the temperature of the hot junction if the cold junction is at 22 oC?

At 22 oC, the reference junction voltage is 0.870 mV

The hot junction voltage is therefore 3.409 mV + 0.870 mV = 4.279 mV
The temperature at the hot junction is therefore 100 oC
 APPLYING WHAT WE’VE LEARNED
Voltage difference of the hot and cold junctions: VD = 4.472 mV
What is the temperature of the hot junction if the cold junction is at –5 oC?

At -5 oC, the cold junction voltage is –0.193 mV

The hot junction voltage is therefore 4.472 mV – 0.193 mV = 4.279 mV
The temperature at the hot junction is therefore 100 oC
Acquiring Data
 RTDs (resistance temperature detectors)

• Resistivity of metals is a function of temperature.

• Platinum often used since it can be used for a wide temperature range and has
excellent stability. Nickel or nickel alloys are used as well, but they aren’t as
accurate.
• In several common configurations, the platinum wire is exposed directly to air
(called a bird-cage element), wound around a bobbin and then sealed in molten
glass, or threaded through a ceramic cylinder.
• Metal film RTDs are new. To make these, a platinum or metal-glass slurry film is
deposited onto a ceramic substrate. The substrate is then etched with a laser.
These RTDs are very small but aren’t as stable (and hence accurate).
• RTDs are more accurate but also larger and more expensive than thermocouples.
 RTD con…
• Two terminal device
• Usually made out of platinum
• Positive temperature coefficient
• Tends to be linear
• R = R0(1+α)(T-T0) where T0 = 0oC
R0 = 100 Ω, α = 0.03385 Ω/ Ω oC
• At 10oC, R = 100(1+0.385)(10) = 103.85
Ω
• They are best operated using a small
constant current source
• Accuracy of 0.01 oC
• EXPENSIVE!
 RTD geometry

• Sheathing: stainless steel, glass, alumina, quartz

• Metal sheath can cause contamination at high
temperatures and are best below 250ºc.
• At very high temperatures, quartz and high-purity
alumina are best to prevent contamination.
 Resistance measurement

• Several different bridge circuits are used to determine the resistance. Bridge
circuits help improve the accuracy of the measurements significantly. Bridge
output voltage is a function of the RTD resistance.
 Resistance/temperature conversion

• Published equations relating bridge voltage to temperature can be used.

• For very accurate results, do your own calibration.
• Several electronic calibrators are available.
• The most accurate calibration that you can do easily yourself is to use a
constant temperature bath and nist-traceable thermometers. You then can
make your own calibration curve correlating temperature and voltage.
Class A and B
 Potential problems

• RTDs are more fragile than thermocouples.

• An external current must be supplied to the RTD. This current can heat the RTD,
altering the results. For situations with high heat transfer coefficients, this error is
small since the heat is dissipated to air. Use the largest RTD possible and smallest
external current possible to minimize this error.
 Thermistor
Thermistor – a resistor whose resistance changes with temperature
The Thermistor is a solid-state temperature sensing device which acts
a bit like an electrical resistor but is temperature sensitive.
Thermistors can be used to produce an analogue output voltage with
variations in ambient temperature and as such can be referred to as a
transducer.

• Resistive element is generally a metal-oxide ceramic containing Mn,

Co, Cu, or Ni
• Packaged in a thermally conductive glass bead or disk with two metal
leads
• Suppose we have a “1 kΩ thermistor”
• What does this mean?
• At room temperature, the resistance of the thermistor is 1 kΩ
• What happens to resistance as we increase temperature?
 Negative Temperature Coefficient
• Most materials exhibit a negative temperature coefficient (NTC)
• Resistance drops with temperature!
 Converting Resistance to Temperature
• The Steinhart-Hart Equation relates temperature to resistance

• T is the temperature (in Kelvin)

• R is the resistance at T and Rref is resistance at Tref
• A1, B1, C1, and D1 are the Steinhart-Hart Coefficients
• HOW COULD WE DETERMINE THESE COEFFICIENTS?
• Take a look at the data sheet
• Measure 3 resistances at 3 temperatures
• Matrix Inversion (Linear Algebra)
• Least Squares Fit
Converting Resistance to Temperature
 How is Resistance Measured?
Thermistor Resistance (RT)
• A thermistor produces a resistance (RT), which must be
converted to a voltage signal

𝑅𝑇
𝑉𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 𝑉𝑆
𝑅𝑇 + 𝑅1
 Power Dissipation in Thermistors
• A current must pass through the I
thermistor to measure the voltage and
calculate the resistance
• The current flowing through the
thermistor generates heat because the
thermistor dissipates electrical power
P = I2RT
• The heat generated causes a temperature
rise in the thermistor
• This is called Self-Heating
• WHY IS SELF-HEATING BAD?
 Power Dissipation and Self-Heating
• Self-Heating can introduce an error into the measurement
• The increase in device temperature (ΔT) is related to the power dissipated
(P) and the power dissipation factor (δ)
P = δ ΔT
Where P is in [W], ΔT is the rise in temperature in [oC]
• Suppose I = 5 mA, RT = 4 kΩ, and δ = 0.067 W/oC, what is ΔT?
(0.005 A)2(4000 Ω) = (0.067 W/oC) ΔT
ΔT = 1.5 oC
• What effect does a ΔT of 1.5 oC have on your thermistor measurements?
• How can we reduce the effects of self-heating?
• Increase the resistance of the thermistor!
 Thermistor Signal Conditioning Circuit
• A voltage divider and a unity gain buffer are required to measure
temperature in the lab
buffer
+5 V
REF195 reference
-
10k To ADC

1/4
Thermistor AD8606
(AD8605)
 Thermistors con…
• Thermistors also measure the change in resistance with temperature.
• Thermistors are very sensitive (up to 100 times more than RTDs and
1000 times more than thermocouples) and can detect very small
changes in temperature. They are also very fast.
• Due to their speed, they are used for precision temperature control
and any time very small temperature differences must be detected.
• They are made of ceramic semiconductor material (metal oxides).
• The change in thermistor resistance with temperature is very non-
linear.
Thermistor non-linearity
 Resistance/temperature conversion

• Standard thermistors curves are not provided as much as with thermocouples or

RTDs. You often need a curve for a specific batch of thermistors.
• No 4-wire bridge is required as with an RFD.
• DAQ systems can handle the non-linear curve fit easily.
• Thermistors do not do well at high temperatures and show instability with time
(but for the best ones, this instability is only a few millikelvin per year)
 Integrated Silicon Linear Sensors
• An integrated silicon linear
sensor is a three-terminal device
• Power and ground inputs
• Relatively simple to use and cheap
• Circuitry inside does linearization and
signal conditioning
• Produces an output voltage linearly
dependent on temperature
• When compared to other temperature
measurement devices, these sensors
are less accurate, operate over a
narrower temperature range, and are
less responsive 3.1 – 5.5 V
Temperature Measurement Devices

>
How to Choose a Temperature Control Device or
System
◼ Things to take into account
– Standards
– Cost
– Accuracy
– Stability over time (esp. for high temperatures)
– Sensitivity
– Size
– Contact/non-contact
– Temperature range
Choice Between RTDs, Thermocouples, Thermisters

◼ Cost – thermocouples are cheapest by far, followed by RTDs

◼ Accuracy – RTDs or thermisters
◼ Sensitivity – thermisters
◼ Speed - thermisters
◼ Stability at high temperatures – not thermisters
◼ Size – thermocouples and thermisters can be made quite small
◼ Temperature range – thermocouples have the highest range, followed by RTDs
◼ Ruggedness – thermocouples are best if your system will be taking a lot of abuse
◦ Two dissimilar metals are bonded together and is termed as bimetallic
strip, as sketched.

◦ If A metal has a smaller coefficient of thermal expansion than metal B ,

with temperature increase ; metal B expands more than does metal A.
◦ It causes the bimetallic strip to curl upwards.
 All objects emit electromagnetic radiation as a function of their
temperature above absolute zero, and radiation thermometers
measure this radiation in order to calculate the temperature of the
object. The total rate of radiation emission per second is given by:
𝑑𝑞
𝐸=𝐾∗ 𝑇4 ↔ = 𝑒𝜎𝐴𝑇 4
𝑑𝑡
 Where,
𝑑𝑞
 = Radiant heat loss rate (watts)
𝑑𝑡
 e = Emissivity factor (unitless)
−8 𝑤
 σ = Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.67 × 10 𝐾4)
𝑚2
 A = Surface area (square meters)
 T = Absolute temperature (Kelvin)
 The power spectral density of this emission varies with temperature in the manner
shown in Figure below.
 The major part of the frequency spectrum lies within the band of wavelengths
between 0.3 m and 40 m, which corresponds to the visible (0.3–0.72 m) and
infrared (0.72–1000 m) ranges. As the magnitude of the radiation varies with
temperature, measurement of the emission from a body allows the temperature of the
body to be calculated. Choice of the best method of measuring the emitted radiation
depends on the temperature of the body.
 Different versions of radiation thermometers are capable of measuring temperatures
between -100C and +10,000C with measurement inaccuracy as low as ±0.05%
(though this level of accuracy is not obtained when measuring very high
temperatures).
Why the
sky is
blue????
 The optical pyrometer is designed to measure temperatures where the peak
radiation emission is in the red part of the visible spectrum, i.e. where the
measured body glows a certain shade of red according to the temperature.
This limits the instrument to measuring temperatures above 600C. The
instrument contains a heated tungsten filament within its optical system.
 The current in the filament is increased until its colour is the same as the hot
body: under these conditions the filament apparently disappears when
viewed against the background of the hot body.
 Temperature measurement is therefore obtained in terms of the current
flowing in the filament.
 As the brightness of different materials at any particular temperature varies
according to the emissivity of the material, the calibration of the optical
pyrometer must be adjusted according to the emissivity of the target.
 The inherent measurement inaccuracy of an optical pyrometer is ±5C. However, in
addition to this error, there can be a further operator-induced error of ±10C arising
out of the difficulty in judging the moment when the filament ‘just’ disappears.
Measurement accuracy can be improved somewhat by employing an optical filter
within the instrument that passes a narrow band of frequencies of wavelength around
0.65 m corresponding to the red part of the visible spectrum. This also extends the
upper temperature measurable from 5000C in unfiltered instruments up to 10 000C.
The instrument cannot be used in automatic temperature control schemes because the
eye of the human operator is an essential part of the measurement system.
 The reading is also affected by fumes in the sight path. Because of these difficulties and
its low accuracy, hand-held radiation pyrometers are rapidly overtaking the optical
pyrometer in popularity, although the instrument is still widely used in industry for
measuring temperatures in furnaces and similar applications at present.

At Equal object and

filament temperature
(equal light intensity)
 All the alternative forms of radiation pyrometer described below have an optical
system that is similar to that in the optical pyrometer and focuses the energy emitted
from the measured body.
 However, they differ by omitting the filament and eyepiece and having instead an
energy detector in the same focal plane as the eyepiece was, as shown in Figure. This
principle can be used to measure temperature over a range from 100C to 3600C. The
radiation detector is either a thermal detector, which measures the temperature rise in a
black body at the focal point of the optical system, or a photon detector.
 Thermal detectors respond equally to all wavelengths in the frequency spectrum,
and consist of either thermopiles, resistance thermometers or thermistors. All of these
typically have time constants of several milliseconds, because of the time taken for
the black body to heat up and the temperature sensor to respond to the temperature
change.
 Photon detectors respond selectively to a particular band within the full spectrum,
and are usually of the photoconductive or photovoltaic type. They respond to
temperature changes very much faster than thermal detectors because they involve
atomic processes, and typical measurement time constants are a few microseconds.
Fibre-optic technology is frequently used in high-temperature measurement
applications to collect the incoming radiation and transmit it to a detector and
processing electronics that are located remotely.
Based on optical technology – in most cases, on fiber optics.

Optical temperature sensors can offer important advantages.

They can be operated in very wide temperature ranges, are insensitive to electromagnetic
interference, and they do not require electrical cables.

Temperature sensors can also be based on measuring

the intensity of thermal radiation emitted by
objects.

widely used for measurements in technical

installations such as industrial processing plants,
bridges, tunnels, mines, buildings, oil and gas
pipelines and power transmission lines.
 Thermal imaging is simply the process of converting infrared (IR) radiation
(heat) into visible images that depict the spatial distribution of temperature
differences in a scene viewed by a thermal camera.
 The imaging camera is fitted with an infrared detector, usually in a focal plane array,
of micron-size detecting elements or “pixels.”
 A very useful application of non-contact sensor technology is thermal imaging,
where a dense array of infrared radiation sensors provides a graphic display of
objects in its view according to their temperatures. Each object shown on the digital
display of a thermal imager is artificially coloured in the display on a chromatic scale
that varies with temperature, hot objects typically registering as red tones and cold
objects typically registering as blue tones.
-thermal imaging camera(lens and sensors)
-that allows infrared energy to pass through it
-focused light heat the sensor
-this will display on thermogram
-the we will se the colored image