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Re: Output Voltage vs. Firing Rate (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 22:37:20 -0700
From: lod-at-pacbell-dot-net
To: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Re: Output Voltage vs. Firing Rate (fwd)
"L. Robertson" wrote:
> I have a DC powered coil with independant control of break rate
> and power input. At low BPS multiple sparks break out around
> the torus once the power is brought up to the point of breakout,
> no matter how high the power.
>
> As the break rate increases the sparks coalesce into a less
> number of streamers until at ~ 150 BPS one streamer roils
> around often changing direction rapidly, but not breaking up.
This magic break rate occurs at the point where the ion lifetimes
can start to enhance the longevity of the arc, resulting in one
or two 'dominant' arcs instead of a brush discharge.
The gap speed where the brushy streamers coalesce into
a single dominant channel also seems to depend upon the
physical size of the coil. I had thought that the ion
lifetimes were more or less independent of the coil action,
but larger coils seem to exhibit noticably longer ion lifetimes.
My old coil 'coalesces' at around 1500RPM, or 150BPS. However
the Electrum coil does so much earlier, around 110 to 120BPS.
Perhaps this is due to a squared/cubed relationship in the
surrounding ion cloud, or in the arc itself, where doubling the
scale increases the surface area by 4, but the volume by 8.
This would slow the dissipation of both the ion cloud and arc.
This is good news if true, for it would increase the upper limit
on the maximum practical size of a Tesla Coil.
--
-GL
www.lod-dot-org