RE: Designing High-Gain Triple Resonance Tesla-Transformers

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

Original poster: "Steve Conner" <steve.conner-at-optosci-dot-com> 

 >source frequency
 >resonance; a subject beyond most tesla coiler's
 >expertise.

Well not really... Anyone who has ever played around with VTTCs or SSTCs has
used source frequency resonance (or forced response as Antonio would call
it) since the vacuum tube/MOSFET/IGBT/whatever is just a source of high
frequency AC.

The only significant difference is that it can produce far higher
frequencies than a rotating alternator could, so we can use
conveniently-sized air cored coils. I've seen pictures of Harvey Norris's
alternator-driven resonance coils and they're _BIG_ :o

I believe Tesla himself used special HF alternators to drive his coils at
one stage, and similar machines were used for medical electronics and radio
transmission, until they were superceded by tube and transistor generators.


 >The net result of this was that
 >the ending group of 20 coils recieved more amperage
 >then if the same group of coils were directly
 >connected to the same source of emf!

This is a great demonstration of the powers of resonance, but not really
unusual. You can easily induce enormous currents in a parallel resonant
circuit by applying just a small current to it. Nobody's breaking any laws
of physics, as the current is reactive- no actual work is done by it. The
power associated with that current is just sloshing between stored electric
and magnetic energy.

For instance, in an RF amplifier as used by radio hams etc. the resonant
output circuit can see currents of a few amps, although the plate current of
the tube driving it may only be ~0.2A. This may seem wasteful, but in fact a
strong resonance is desirable in the output circuit- it makes sure only the
wanted signal is amplified, and other unwanted frequencies (harmonics etc)
are filtered out.

Steve C.