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I am heating up a wire with a current, and I am trying to express the cooling losses. What is the expression of dT/dx over a wire?

WireHeating
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    It's a question suited for physics StackExchange. – Marko Buršič Sep 29 '16 at 08:26
  • And more details. What is the environment? What temperatures? Thermal mass? Totally unanswerable as written. – R Drast Sep 29 '16 at 09:48
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    This is a valid EE question, but perhaps beyond the limited scope of this site. Ampacity tables for AWG sizes show limits based on temp rise per unit length. – Tony Stewart EE75 Sep 29 '16 at 11:08
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    For an infinite wire with even cooling and constant resistivity, you can just model it as dT/dx = 0. For a finite wire you'll need a correction term at each end depending on wire thickness, wire material, the nature of the termination, the temperature of the termination, boundary layer effects in the cooling medium and so on. If the resistivity is not constant (e.g. at a kink in the wire) you'll need to know the tempco of resistivity and a LOT more about the cooling to model any resulting hotspots. –  Sep 29 '16 at 11:18
  • What about cooling by thermal conduction, convection and radiation? What is around the wire, air, gas, liquid or solid? – Uwe Sep 29 '16 at 13:19

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