RE: Critical rise time (RE: Terry's New Plane Wave Antenna)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Marco Denicolai" <marco.denicolai@xxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Gerry (and Dmitry too),

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 21:31
> To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Critical rise time (RE: Terry's New Plane Wave Antenna)
>
> Original poster: "Gerry  Reynolds" <gerryreynolds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Hi  Terry,
>
> I think Im still a little confused on the definition of "rise time"
> in the context of the topload voltage.  Is this the rise time of the
> enevelope of the ring up, or the rise time of a single 1/4 cycle
> sinewave, or perhaps some other definition??

Forget about envelope, bang rate, etc. The gap doesn't know you are using a
TC, the authors that wrote those papers didn't have a TC.

We are simply talking about a potential rising up to a maximum (crest) value
and then falling down to zero. Standard definitions are SI (Switching
impulse), LI (lightning impulse), etc. Or they can report, for example, 1/50
us, which means a waveform rising in 1 us to its maximum (roughly) and
falling to 50% of it in 50 us.

So take a gap, apply a SINGLE pulse with a certain rise time, fall time and
with a peak value of U50 (i.e. a voltage that in 50% cases results in
breakdown). How fast the breakdown will come? The fastest will be when
applying a pulse of "critical rise time".

Now, all the speculations about fo, bang repetition, sinewave shape,
envelope, etc. are extrapolations we don't know about. We need to start from
the elementary pieces (a positive discharge, a negative discharge) in order
to build much more complicated waveforms, as the TC generates.

Best Regards