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Author: Subject: Blowing up a resistor at the end of 100m of wire
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[*] posted on 2-2-2009 at 23:06


Maybe you're right somewhat. But look at those massive connections: 100's of kA will pass easily through ; internal resistance probably is minimized too. Such a one is definately more suitable than some small electrolytic ; I bet that internally it's massively parallel-connected, which means low inductance and fast discharge ; besides: When thinking about what's up when such a one fails in an electric locomotive (which my ones are for) or in a big factory, then probably it's a stable construction, since shorts happen once in a while.

All those electrical networks are built with short-circuit-currents of 10's of kA in mind; even a 16-A household fuse is built so it can break at least 6 or 10 kA of short-circuit-current ... .

There's another factor: The capacitor is massive, so any forces will be distributed over nearly the entire volume of the thing: Mechanical damage to the capacitor may probably only happen at the internal connection-zones, should these be too weak.

The internal charge is distributed over much material with such non-electrolytics, and the nice thing about oil-dielectric is that it's self-rearranging, no weaknesses due to repetitive strong discharges ; in fact fluid dielectrics are probably the best choice for such abuses ...

One thing that comes to my mind: Somewhere I read, that oil-capacitors have also the advantage of surviving an internal breakdown ... ; not sure if that's true fur such big ones too ...

But staying away from the experiment, and remote-controlling everything (maybe some strong relay ...), is a must ! Any circuitry may be accelerated to any velocity ; in power-electric engineering people wear bullet-proof clothing, because in case of a short the material may get's it's 1-2 km/s (!) ...
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[*] posted on 7-2-2009 at 12:05


If you use capacitors for discharge experiments, then you really need capacitors made for that purpose. The ones, I have shown in this thread are made for this purpose. A very fast discharge imposes a strong mechanical shock on the capacitor. The field between the plates suddenly drops from a large value (many MVolts/m) to almost 0 and the attractive forces, associated with the strong potential difference between the plates suddenly disappears and that gives increadible mechanical strain (like hitting with a hammer on it). Capacitors not especially constructed to survive these strains quickly are broken (after at most a few tens of discharges).

The capacitors I have were intended to be used in special high power pulse laser systems.




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[*] posted on 7-2-2009 at 13:08


And I say: A big oil-capacitor has the forces distributed over a large amount of material, so each bit of material only gets a relatively small share of the abuse ; .

What can happen internally: The dielectric (oil) can, upon release of the charge, suddenly get it's tiny bit of expansion, after the compression by the coulomb force ; that's not much.
The electromagnetic forces are not big for each pair of plates ...

But probably with other types of capacitors the failure can be quite probable:
==> Any solid dielectric may just get too worn after a while ;
==> any high charge density (electrolytics) will subject too little material to the forces, with thereby faster mechanical response of the material and greater mechanical stress ...

But a big oil-capacitor ? With only 10 microFarad per liter of volume ? The electrolytic has, for the same volume, maybe 1 Farad ... ; _that's_ stress, 100 000 times higher ...
It's as with other things: A big enough mass maybe can take it ... ?

But anyhow: Staying away from the discharge is a must, as mentioned above: 1 km/s of circuitry-speed (some piece of wire ...) may be no over-estimation ...

[Edited on 7-2-2009 by chief]
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