The thermally-sensitive resistors (thermistors) used in VSL’s water calorimeter to detect the radiation-induced temperature change in water are affected by self-heat. The measurement current used to determine their resistance causes their temperature to increase above that of their environment. The self-heat …

This report describes the work that has been done on the water calorimeter project at VSL. The calorimeter determines the absorbed-dose-to water Dw in gray, by measuring the radiation induced temperature change. The temperature of the water will change due to irradiation of a beam ionizing radiation. …

Research has been done to improve the understanding the self-heat effect, due to power dissipation, of temperature-dependant resistors in the VSL water calorimeter. A custom measurement program has been written to be able to control and read out three Agilent 3458A digital multimeters (DMMs). With these …