Thermoregulator

thermoregulator

[¦thər·mō′reg·yə‚lād·ər]

(engineering)

A high-accuracy or high-sensitivity thermostat; one type consists of a mercury-in-glass thermometer with sealed-in electrodes, in which the rising and falling column of mercury makes and breaks an electric circuit.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Thermoregulator

 

(high-precision thermostat), a device for the automatic maintenance of a given temperature in a room, vessel, pipeline, or furnace.

The sensor of a linear thermoregulator operates by measuring the length of a sensitive element, which depends on temperature. A signal is fed from the sensor to an actuating mechanism, which regulates the supply of the heating agent. In thermoregulators used in refrigerators and desiccators, for example, the sensor is a bimetallic plate or coil. Upon a change in the temperature of the medium, the plate bends and closes the circuit of the electric actuating mechanism. The simplest volume thermoregulator is a mercury-filled contact thermometer in which the mercury closes the electric circuit of the actuating mechanism when a predetermined temperature is reached. Volume thermoregulators with a manometric sensor are also used. The signal from the sensor is fed to a mechanical, electric, or pneumatic regulator.

Thermoelectric thermoregulators, which use thermal resistors or thermocouples as sensors, usually operate in conjunction with bridges and potentiometers.

Thermoregulators are components of automatic regulation systems.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.