Various methods to the thermistor problem with a bulk electrical conductivity

In this paper, Explicit Finite Difference (EFD), Galerkin Finite Element (GFE) and Heat‐Balance Integral (HBI) methods are applied to the one‐dimensional thermistor problem with a bulk electrical conductivity to obtain its steady‐state solutions. It is shown that EFD, GFE and HBI solutions exhibit the correct physical characteristic of the problem, and they are in very good agreement with the exact solution. The only marked difference is time to attain steady states. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.