A Rigorous Approach to Electro-Thermal Network Modeling

In this paper the notion of thermal net- work associated to an electric circuit is univocally defined. The definition of the temperatures of the elements of the electric circuit and of the power densities they dissipate are deduced. The relation among these variables is shown to be naturally mod- eled through a distributed thermal network preserv- ing the relevant physical properties of the thermal problem. The linear thermal problem is considered in details and the particular structure of the dis- tributed linear thermal network is deduced.