On 4/6/13 9:52 AM, Holbok István wrote:
Hello TC List-Members, I have found a genius tool few weeks ago, and I would like to ask your opinion about it. This is Modelica. Modelica® is a non-proprietary, object-oriented, equation based language to conveniently model *complex physical systems* containing, e.g., mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, thermal, control, electric power or process-oriented subcomponents. Here is the language description: https://www.modelica.org/ And here is an Open Source (free) tool to use Modelica for modeling any type system with magnetic flux, electric field, torque (appearing due to rotating magnetic fields), etc. https://www.openmodelica.org/ The OpenModelica software is available for Windows, Linux and Mac users also. The Modelica model libraries can be rewritten or appended so one can build own libraries for modeling e.g. different type of Tesla cloils, etc, of course if one understand what is a Tesla coil. There is a strict law: If you can model something and the if the model reflects the reality well, you understand that things. And if you are not able to model or to demonstrate something you certain do not understand that things. When I worked on the field of business consultancy this law helped me to find any mis-understood at the business executives. If one was not able to demonstrate or model his business processes I knew the business process was not established yet and there was nobody to confront what is the real job to do (in other words there was a confusion instead of established processes). My question is: Did somebody try to model or design a Tesla Coil with Modelica or other tool? What were the experiences if so?
I don't believe that anyone has tried to model a TC with tools like Modelica..
There are some FEM codes written specifically to model a TC (Paul Nicholson's work, in particular). http://abelian.org/tssp/
There is a fair amount of complexity in TC modeling, once you get past the coupled LC circuits (which are adequately modeled by simple low order equations as lumped components.. See Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz's work on various topologies). Example: http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/magnifier.html
Some folks have modeled TCs (particularly newer non-spark-gap based coils, like the DRSSTC) in Spice http://scopeboy.com/tesla/drsstc/simulation.html is an example
The real challenge in modeling a TC is modeling the spark. This is *very* difficult once you move beyond a simple RC lumped model, because the spark grows and shrinks, with charge flowing in and out on a time scale that is very short, so you run into the usual modeling problems where you've got a combination of very fast phenomena (spark leader growth on a scale of nanoseconds) with slow phenomena (the resonance of the LC system on a time scale of microseconds) with even slower phenomena: the 100-200 Hz "break rate" of the coil.
I would say the "low hanging fruit" for TC modeling, if you want to make a big advance, is in the spark behavior. Everything else is adequately modeled by standard tools like SPICE or Excel, especially with the use of some empirically and analytically derived approximations (e.g. Medhurst for capacitance of a long solenoid). The error from the approximations is small in comparison to the uncertainties of the spark behavior.
You might also look at the modeling of things like a rotary spark gap. _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla