Re: saturable reactor vs choke

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Gerry  Reynolds" <gerryreynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi David,

A few questions:

If one has a saturable reactor and the BH curve is sorta ideal with 
respect to the knee ( ie: it has constant slope until it saturates 
and then the curve precisely flattens out), I'm wondering what 
happens when this knee is reached.

Does the current scream very high or is there a smooth transition to 
larger current as the saturation point is changed??

Does a saturable reactor require a soft knee??

Gerry R.

> Original poster: "David Rieben" <drieben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> With a "saturable reactor" (SR), in addtion to the "working"
> inductive coil, there is also a "control coil" of usually many
> more turns of smaller guage wire than the main "working"
> coil. A relatively low, variable DC voltage is introduced into the 
> control coil to control the magnetic saturation of the iron
> core so as to control the current flow through the main
> working coil. This allows infinite range of the current that's
> allowed to flow through the main working coil, irregardless
> of the source load.
>
> David Rieben