TSSP: List Archives

From: Marco.Denicolai@tellabs.com
Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 09:30:27 +0300
Subject: [TSSP] Measuring Thor (was: Modeling with ANSOFT)

Hi Bert,

> The distributed liquid divider you've described sounds very 
> interesting! Do you recall which book described this device?

After a long search I finally found out were my PDF was from. Check

http://www.fieldp.com/cpa/cpa.html

Check near the end of Chapter 9. There is a picture (figure 9.54) and a 
short explanation of this divider. That could be built and hanged from 
the roof on the top of Thor's toroid, to touch it.
My only worry is, will the grid be sensible to the Efield? On the other 
hand, it would be unusable if it had to be shielded. Any opinion?

> Malcolm's suggestion of using a chain of capacitors down the 
> center of the resonator is excellent, and I seem to recall that Greg 
> Leyh tried this approach using a chain of ceramic (doorknob?) 
> capacitors to add bulk C to a small topload.

I am afraid, going that way, to get into the same business of building a 
(traditional) compensated probe. That means PSpice, etc. With the 
difference that, this time, the voltage to be measured ought to be about 
600 kV.
One thing to consider is the strong Efield Thor generates. It seems to 
me that any measuring device placed in that environment has to be 
shielded (and shield grounded) to perform a meaningful measurement. 
Expecially if going to measure a tiny charge on the bottom of a 
capacitor chain.

My last month measurements were a family of curves type

Number_of_bangs = f(d,V)

where:

Number_of_bangs = N. of bangs to reach a grounded stick
d = distance of the stick
V = capacitor charging voltage (bang energy)

I collected a nice data set, showing roughly normal distribution 
(somebody argued I should have looked for Weibull distribution). It is 
also possible to see how the Efield requirement for the leader to 
proceed bends over 1 m distance. This means that, after 1 m is reached, 
the same amount of bangs produces a longer jump.

The "stick reached" condition was detected with a Pearson current probe 
measuring the stick current to ground. The hit condition was set to a 
current of at least 3 A. Sadly the probe was capturing also a sensible 
fraction of the Efield. My understanding of the problem is that the 
stick was capturing also the Efield and creating a current to ground.

In my next setup:
- only the stick top (a 60 mm sphere) is going to be unshielded
- the sphere must be grounded through the central conductor of a 
shielded cable
- the cable must be protected (insulated) by, say, a PVC tube
- the shield of the cable is grounded at its bottom
- the central conductor is passed through the Pearson probe and grounded 
at the bottom too
- the probe is contained in a shielded and grounded case
- the probe shielded cable (to the O-scope) its grounded at both sides
- the Thor toroid protuberance is substituted by a 25 mm stainless steel 
sphere, easier to model and reproduce

This way I hope to have only the top ball immersed in the Efield and the 
rest of the stick (and the probe) shielded from it.

What is your opinion?

Best Regards


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Maintainer Paul Nicholson, paul@abelian.demon.co.uk.