Re: Pspice model of Tesla Coil

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Pspice model of Tesla Coil
From: Richard Hull <hullr-at-whitlock-dot-com>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 11:01:17 -0700
Tesla List wrote:
> 
> >From misc3312-at-cantva.canterbury.ac.nzWed Jun 19 21:24:24 1996
> Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 22:10:49 +0000
> From: misc3312-at-cantva.canterbury.ac.nz
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Pspice model of Tesla Coil
> 
> Hi everyone
> 
> I am trying to model a Tesla coil using Pspice.  To start with, I
> thought I'd try and model the lumped circuit as you would see in any
> schematic and see what I got.  While I seem to be getting vaguely
> believable waveforms, the secondary voltage and current magnitudes
> seem way off (approx 10kV and 200mA peak respectively).
> 
> Has anyone else tried this....

> Any comments / ideas will be greatfully received
> 
> Regards
> 
> Richard

Richard,

It will be hard for me to remain positive on this issue ( I have yet to 
see one of these  *#$%-at- "modeling wonders" do beans towards correctly 
predicting any thing close for disruptive discharge systems.)

I feel that this particular modeling package (Pspice) was made up by 
people who knew all the equations and had little feel for practical 
application.  Also, it is crucial to follow their logic in entering the 
data or you can skew the results or get completely bogus returns.  As I 
am not a using the package regularly, I can't review the inputs you sent.
Everything seems to be in order, except the spark resistance.  I feel it 
is too low.  This is the big bugaboo surrounding entering data for Tesla 
coils.  No one really knows the spark gap's resistance to even an order 
of magnitude (sometimes), thus the output could be skewed or off plus or 
minus an order of magnitude or two (never a happy though to us design 
enegineers).  Garbage in, garbage out.

Good luck on getting this "computing marvel" to spit out genuine data 
descriptive of reality.

Remember, you said you'd welcome any comments.

Richard Hull, TCBOR