Re: Maxwell AC vs. DC ratings

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

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"
According to Bob Cooper, Maxwell's chief cap engineer, the usual suspect
is
surface tracking at the sharp edge of the plate foil.  Second in line is
corona within voids in the dielectric."

	When I worked at Hughes we had a group which built special capacitors
for radar pulse-forming networks.  A standard check of capacitor quality
was to apply an increasing AC voltage and listen for RF noise which was
indicative of internal corona which eventually leads to certain failure
in that service.

Ed