On 4/28/11 6:20 AM, Gary Lau wrote:
It's possible to calculate a theoretical maximum secondary voltage, by using conservation of energy. You know the amount of energy per bang that starts on the primary side - Joules = 1/2*Cpri*Vpri*Vpri where Cpri is the tank capacitance in Farads, Vpri is the voltage on the cap when the spark gap fires. Assuming that all of that energy is transferred to the secondary side with NO losses (a very incorrect assumption), equate that number to 1/2*Csec*Vsec*Vsec, where Csec is the combined capacitance of the secondary coil and topload, and Vsec is the peak topload voltage. Solve for Vsec, and understand that this figure won't come close to being achieved due to losses. Amperage? That would depend on a great many things. Short answer - no. Regards, Gary Lau MA, USA On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Cole Awesome-Jordan< jordancole@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi, is there an equation to determine the output voltage and amperage of the top load? I've been searching but I can find anything.
The other constraint on voltage is the radius of curvature of the top load. At some point, the voltage gets high enough that the air breaks down.. For most tesla coils, that's what limits the voltage under the theoretical conservation of energy limit that Gary described.
When you're talking current, you need to distinguish between "current out of top of secondary into topload" and "current in a discharge from the topload"
The former is easy, using the same conservation of energy approach.. Isec^2 = Ipri^2 * Lsec/Lpri
You need to know Lpri, of course. That you can get also from conservation of energy: Lpri*Ipri^2 = Cpri*Epri^2
Set up a little Excel spreadsheet and you can fool around with all this quite nicely. I do a lot of back of the envelope stuff with a 15 year old .xls from Ed Sonderman.. it has the simple Wheeler and Medhurst formulae in it to calculate Ls and Cs.. and I wind up adding calculations in other cells to look at things like bang energy, max/avg current and voltage, etc.
First hit for tesla.xls on google finds it: deanostoybox.com/hot-streamer/dnadig/tesla.xls _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla