Hot Wire Anemometer

A hot wire anemometer involves the heat that is dissipated by a hot wire to an ambient fluid passing through it. For a fixed wire temperature, the heat dissipation from the wire will be larger with larger velocity of the fluid. Alternately, for a fixed heat dissipation rate from the wire, the wire temperature will be smaller with larger velocity of the fluid. Thus, a hot wire anemometer is a thermal device and the velocity information is converted to thermal either by temperature change or change in the heat dissipation rate information.