Consider a wire that's immersed in a fluid flow. Assume that the wire, heated by an electrical current input, is in thermal equilibrium with its environment. The electrical power input is equal to the power lost to convective heat transfer,

where I is the input current, R_w is the resistance of the wire, T_w and T_f are the temperatures of the wire and fluid respectively, A_w is the projected wire surface area, and h is the heat transfer coefficient of the wire.

The wire resistance R_w is also a function of temperature according to,

where a is the thermal coefficient of resistance and R_Ref is the resistance at the reference temperature T_Ref.

The heat transfer coefficient h is a function of fluid velocity v_f according to King's law,

where a, b, and c are coefficients obtained from calibration (c ~ 0.5).

Combining the above three equations allows us to eliminate the heat transfer coefficient h,

Continuing, we can solve for the fluid velocity,

Two types of thermal (hot-wire) anemometers are commonly used: constant-temperature and constant-current.

The constant-temperature anemometers are more widely used than constant-current anemometers due to their reduced sensitivity to flow variations. Noting that the wire must be heated up high enough (above the fluid temperature) to be effective, if the flow were to suddenly slow down, the wire might burn out in a constant-current anemometer. Conversely, if the flow were to suddenly speed up, the wire may be cooled completely resulting in a constant-current unit being unable to register quality data.

For a hot-wire anemometer powered by an adjustable current to maintain a constant temperature, T_w and R_w are constants. The fluid velocity is a function of input current and flow temperature,

Furthermore, the temperature of the flow T_f can be measured. The fluid velocity is then reduced to a function of input current only.

For a hot-wire anemometer powered by a constant current I, the velocity of flow is a function of the temperatures of the wire and the fluid,

If the flow temperature is measured independently, the fluid velocity can be reduced to a function of wire temperature T_w alone. In turn, the wire temperature is related to the measured wire resistance R_w. Therefore, the fluid velocity can be related to the wire resistance.