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Re: Calculating Capacitor currents



Hi Richard,

On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, Tesla List wrote:

> Rod, 
> 
> There is absolutely no way to know the  peak current in the tank, ABSOLUTELY!
> A close first order pass or stab at it would be to apply the Surge impedance
> equation.
> 
> Z surge = square root of L/C
> 
> This will not take into account any form of circuit loses at all, such as
> resisitve and gap losses.  The actual current will always, 100% of the time,
> be much less.
> 
> The only way to determine the actual peak current value is to measure it
> with a current transfomrer while the thing is throwin' arcs!

Yeh, having analysed and experimented a little further as to how the 
current is behaving across the spark gap, you're very much correct in 
saying it's virtually impossible to know what the peak currents are doing 
and when they're occurring...

Well, luckily enough, I know just where to get a current transformer 
from, I'll give it a go, but I'm expecting extreme fluctuating values...

Thanks Ruchard,

Cheers,
Rod