Energy Losses in Conductors Carrying Very High Currents

Abstract

Conductors carrying very high currents show losses of an electromagnetic and a shock compression nature. Electromagnetic losses (joule heating in the skin layer, magnetic flux diffusion) scale as H3 or (I/a)3 ," where H is the self magnetic field of the current and I/a is the current/conductor periphery; shock losses scale as H4 or H3 {(I/a) 4 or (I/a) 3} depending on the magnitude of I. In experiments where electrical energy must be converged from a large pulsed power supply to a small load, these losses can account for half the orignal energy and limit the magnitude of the energy per unit volume in the load. These considerations may be important for the study of material properties at high energy density.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1981
Accession Number
ADA639107

Entities

People

  • Robert O. Hunter
  • Sidney Singer

Organizations

  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Boundaries
  • Compression
  • Conductivity
  • Electric Fields
  • Electric Power
  • Electromagnetic Radiation
  • Energy
  • Energy Storage
  • Equations
  • High Energy
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Materials
  • Power
  • Power Supplies
  • Pulsed Power
  • Transmission Lines

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerodynamics/Aeronautics.
  • Plasma Physics.