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| thermal resistance: an oxymoron? - Article2.htm May, 1997 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-18) |
 | | In practical circumstances, this resistance cannot be an invariant quantity designated by one number, because the orientation of internal conduction heat flow paths changes in response to changes in the thermal environment. |
 | | However, in doing so, the resulting 'thermal resistances' lose their physical meaning completely, as argued in Ref. 4, and one may wonder if the term 'thermal resistance' should be kept, on account of the persistence of the analogy in the minds of most scientists and designers for some time to come. |
 | | In all cases, a thermal resistance can be defined, but in many practical cases, the physical significance of the definition is meaningless, with the exception of those definitions which incorporate the ultimate heat sink (an ambient at uniform temperature) as one of the nodes. |
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