Thermogenesis: Identification by means of pade approximants

The paper describes how to obtain an analytic approximation to the transfer function of a conduction calorimeter, namely, a procedure to identify the calorimetric system. In this case Pade approximants are used on the Laplace transform of the thermogram. The feasibility of the method is tested on two models which span the frequency range usually attained by actual calorimeters. The influence of random noise and baseline drift have also been analyzed. The results show that three or four time constants are correctly obtained.