MEASUREMENT UNCERTAINTY IN THE CHARACTERIZATION OF THERMOELECTRIC MODULES

The authors have presented, in a recent work [1], an Unified Method (UM) to measure the Thermo-Electric Modules (TEM’s) electrical and thermal parameters, i.e. the Seebeck coefficient , the internal electric resistance and the thermal equivalent resistance Θ, in a wide range of different conditions (temperature differences, ambient temperatures, electric loads). The method uses two different current profiles, named Current Sweep (CS) and Small Signal (SS) to derive all the parameters in a single test. The present report, which is a brief abstract of [2], focuses on the uncertainty evaluation of the measured TEM parameters, performing also a detailed senitivity analysis. The analysis consists in evaluating individual uncertainty contributions. The instruments specifications and the measurement setup are carefully taken into account. A custom Monte Carlo simulation is used, to overcome limitations and difficulties inherent in the GUM Uncertainty Framework, and in the Supplement 1 and 2 approach. The results give a comprehensive insight into the most critical issues of the UM, and leads to identifying possible improvements in the measurement setup and the characterization technique proposed in [1].