From: Paul
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:53:05 +0100
Subject: [TSSP] Welcome to the project
Hello All, Welcome everyone and thank you for responding to my appeals on the tesla list. Several people have shown interest, although so far only five have subscribed to this list. I'd better say a bit about whats going on and why. This project started as a simple attempt to model the properties of a tesla resonator during the construction of a CW coil (still an ongoing project). A straightforward time domain simulation of coupled LCR circuits gave reasonable answers and was extended to include the IGBT driver electronics. Following coil construction, measurements disagreed sufficiently with this model to make me wonder what could be done in the way of simulation to improve the estimates of resonant frequency and input impedance. The presence of higher overtone resonances led me to look at a uniform transmission line model, which improved matters, but still could not place the resonances correctly, and the input impedance was actualy worse. Around this time it became apparent that the available material on the Internet was unable to help. Faced with several conflicting views on the theory of tesla coil resonance I decided to see if was possible to construct a more detailed simulation in an attempt to reach a closer understanding of the system. That was a couple of months ago. I now have a working simulation program which shows some promise - it still gives wrong answers although its a lot closer than anything else that I have seen. By now I have exhausted my amateur physics knowledge, hence the need to solicit a wider involvement. My hope is that incorporation of better physics into the model will improve things and perhaps one day lead to some kind of definitive resonator model. The last couple of weeks have been spent tidying up and documenting the existing material and I hope to release this to the group sometime over the coming weekend. This list has been set up so that project members can exchange views in private, as I've no wish to share speculations and erroneous conclusions with a wider audience. If any project members are not running unix workstations of some kind, can they let me know. BTW, I'm a unix systems programmer working in the electrical engineering field, currently doing factory automation. My commercial work is unrelated to tesla coils. I'm 40 yrs old, live on a farm in the Pennine hills, and have been working from home over the net for several years now. I'm also a member of the local mountain rescue team, a radio amateur since 1977, and occasionaly find time to play bass guitar. Regards, -- Paul Nicholson, Manchester, UK. --
Maintainer Paul Nicholson, paul@abelian.demon.co.uk.