The temperature rise caused by the close fault may damage the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) and other electrical equipments. The thermal effect will be quantified by the step-by-step integration, which however cannot differentiate the periodic and aperiodic components. In this paper, the thermal effect of the DFIG is described by 10 components. According to their attenuation of the components, the periodic and the aperiodic components of the thermal effect are determined. To facilitate calculation, the analytical expression of the equivalent duration of the aperiodic components is proposed. To quantify the contributing factors to the thermal effect, the sensitivity model of the equivalent duration to the relevant factors is proposed. The numerical results validate the accuracy of the proposed equivalent duration and sensitivity model of the aperiodic component with different wind speeds and fault severities. The research provides the practical tool for the security of the DFIG, and gives the basis of the future work of the thermal stability check of the wind farms.