Re: Distorted Inductor Question

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>

Inductance, as a general thing, is proportional to the area within the 
loop.  For a given length of wire, in a single "turn", the inductance is 
greatest when the loop is a circle.  The other extreme would be with a very 
thin oval.. two parallel wires shorted at each end.  In the latter case, 
the magnetic field from one wire is neatly cancelled by the field from the 
other adjacent wire, and since inductance is a related to the magnetic 
fields....


For what it's worth, this property has a couple interesting side effects:

1) A loop with current in it will try to make itself bigger.. In quarter 
shrinkers, this produces very large forces trying to make the work coil 
stretch out.

2) If you put a current into a coil, then shrink the coil, the current will 
increase, essentially turning mechanical energy into electrical.. This is 
the principle behind explosively driven Flux Compression Generators, which 
have a lot of interesting(!) applications



At 09:12 AM 8/30/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>Original poster: "Gregory Hunter by way of Terry Fritz 
><twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com>
>
>Dear List Gurus,
>
>I have a theoretical question for you. Suppose I wound
>several turns of wire into the shape of a hoop,
>forming a wide, squat inductor. Now suppose I squash
>this hoop into a long, skinny oval. What happens to
>inductance? Does it go up, down, or stay the same (as
>compared to the original hoop)? Believe it or not,
>this really is background info gathering for a
>possible TC design.
>
>Regards,
>
>=====
>Gregory R. Hunter
>
>http://hot-streamer-dot-com/greg