RE: primary side charging inductors

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Steve Conner" <steve.conner@xxxxxxxxxxx>

>It might be that overall, the total system might be smaller and lighter
>weight if you used a rotary converter

That would be a very interesting setup. A single phase supply driving a
rotary converter that drove three step-up transformers powering a DC
resonant charging coil. You could use the rotary converter as your gap motor
too, which would save a little more weight and bulk. And if your "converter"
was a motor driving a three phase alternator, you could control the output
by adjusting the field excitation, which would remove the need for variacs
etc.

My only concern with this is that a primary side charging inductor won't
give as high (or as stable) a charging voltage "kick" as a secondary side
one. The energy storage effect of the inductors is pushing the charging
voltage up, but at the same time, the inductance causes commutation overlap
in your rectifier, which pushes the voltage back down.

I suppose you could avoid the overlap issue and get full voltage, by making
the charging time constant about one-sixth cycle and using a sync gap at a
break rate of six times the line frequency. But this is probably too high
for eficient streamer growth.

Steve C.