John,
Chris,
sparks to air are different than ground strikes. Only ground
strikes drain
the
energy quickly overall (if the strike happens early in the bang).
John
I think Richie's waveforms show that after about cycles the voltage
broke out and arced to ground which pretty much killed the tank
energy. There is still some left and it rings down very slow. So I
assume here that there was no voltage breakout and the ring down was
just down to losses.
I was wondering if the secondary was less inductance, the frequency
would be higher, so the secondary should be easier to "soak up" the
tank energy than a higher inductance one ?
I ran some figures and got that when you half the turns, it doubles
the frequency and the inductance goes down by a factor of 4 (approx).
According to JavaTC, 200khz is 27.5uS transfer time, and 400khz 13.7uS.
Idea is that if you can transfer the energy quicker by using a higher
frequency, then breakout will happen a lot sooner and drain the tank
cap a lot faster...
I think there are a lot of complications though. For one, if the coil
sparks to ground, lets just say the tank is empty and the RSG dwell
time is not important (since there is zero in the tank left
anyway)...... Now normally lets say the spark gap quenches at the 4th
notch which lets say is 400uS at 200khz... Then at 400khz the gap
would still take 400uS to quench ? I think as the cycles are running
faster that the quench time would also half to 200uS for the 4th notch...
Frequency is a tricky one to think in terms of notches and quench
times. I expect frequency would not alter things other than the amount
of time to take to transfer the energy. Such as 200khz 400uS or 400khz
200uS. In both cases ( all other factors being the same) that it would
still quench at the 4th notch.....
At first I thought that 200khz or 400khz the gap would still take
400uS to quench, as I was thinking more mechanical dwell times. So the
higher frequency would quench at the 8th notch and drain more power...
But I think I as realise now, other factors can cause the gap to
quench ( like arcs to ground) anyway, so its really irrelevant anyway....
So assuming a arc to ground which assuming it drains the tank to zero,
it would not matter if it was 200khz or 400khz, as it would still take
the same amount of cycles to complete the transfer (say 4) but the
higher frequency of 400khz just does it in 200uS and not 400uS as in
200khz....
I am also trying to work out, that other than coupling and frequency
which effect the tank "transfer speed" to secondary... can the
secondary itself become "easier to drive" to make the transfer quicker
? this is why I thought that a lower inductance would take less time
to "charge" and the energy transfer would be quicker than a lower
inductance.... though this could just be down to a higher frequency...
cheers,
Chris
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