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Re: Gap Dwell Times (formerly: Beating Solved)
On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Tesla List wrote:
> A lot of folks think the primary rings are transferred to the secondary!
> Well,.... yes and no. If you do not quench your primary circuit arc
> quickly enough, yes! If you quench the arc at the first zero crossing of
> the primary volatge peak, no!
Another analogy I was thinking about was an experiment with a system of
coupled pendulums I think I remember seeing. One pendulum was set in
motion (the "primary") and was allowed to transfer it's energy into
another initially stationary pendulum (the "secondary"). The first would
lose amplitude while the second would gain amplitude (coupling/energy
transfer), until the first pendulum was essentially stopped and the second
was swinging at it's maximum amplitude ("fully rung up"?). If you let
things progress, the second pendulum would transfer it's energy back into
the system and the first pendulum would start swinging again ("back talk"
or "inductive dance"). They would continue transferring energy back and
forth in this manner until a pendulum was removed (the gap was quenched)
or friction (resistance) ground everything to a halt.
If you removed (quenched) the first pendulum before it hit it's first
energy minimum, then there would still be energy left to transfer and the
second pendulum would not be swinging at it's maximum amplitude (quenching
too fast). If you let things progress for a longer period and allowed the
pendulums to couple and recouple energy back and forth (poor quenching),
then the frictional (resistive/radiative/etc...) losses would damp the
oscillations and the second pendulum would never be "ringing free" at it's
maximum possible amplitude. But if you removed the first pendulum when it
was at a standstill (first zero crossing of the primary beat), then all of
it's energy would have been transferred to the second(ary), which would
then be swinging at it's maximum amplitude free of any influence from the
first.
Taking this analogy further and posing a question - if you try to remove
(quench) a pendulum that's still swinging wildly , you will have a lot of
excess kinetic energy (current) left over to deal with and dissipate. At
it's first beat minimum, there is essentially no kinetic energy and there
would be no problems with any excess energy left to dump. Comparing this
to a coil, has anyone investigated "precision quenching"? It seems that
it would be a lot easier to quench the gap at the exact time that the
primary energy has been completely coupled over to the secondary. At this
time, there would be minimal current circulating in the primary to worry
about and quenching would be a "simple" matter of getting the gap out of
the circuit before the secondary coupled energy back into the primary.
Steve Roys.