Resonance transformer: design and operation principle

A resonant transformer is often called a Tesla transformer or a Tesla coil. The device was patented by the United States of America on September twenty-one, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-six years, under the name "Apparatus for producing electric current of the highest potential and frequency". As one can understand from the title, this device was invented by the famous scientist Nikolai Tesla.

The simplest resonant transformer consists of two coils without a cumulative core. The primary winding has only a few turns (three to ten). However, this winding is wound with a thick electric wire. The secondary winding of such a device as a resonant transformer is often called high voltage. It has much more turns than the primary (up to several hundred). However, it is wound with a thinner electric wire.

As a result of this simple design, the resonant transformer has a CT (conversion coefficient) that exceeds the value of the ratio of the turns of the secondary winding to the primary one by several tens of times. The output voltage on such a transformer can exceed one million volts. Based on a similar design, devices such as resonant generators have already been developed. Also such electric machines are often used as demonstration devices. Due to the enormous voltage at the resonant frequency, such a device is capable of producing electric discharges right in the air. And their length can be truly impressive. Depending on the input voltage, the discharge length can be up to several tens of meters.

The very design of such an electrical installation as a Tesla resonant transformer is quite simple and straightforward. It consists of coils (two - secondary and primary), an arrester (it's a breaker). The structure of this device necessarily includes capacitors (both for compensation and for accumulation of charge). Often, toroidal coils and terminals are used (to create a device such as a resonant transformer with increased output power).

As already mentioned before, the primary coil has traditionally few turns, and the secondary coil has several hundred. Moreover, there is often a design with a flat primary coil, horizontal, cylindrical, conical or vertical. Also in such a device as a resonant transformer, there is no ferromagnetic core (as opposed to power or measuring transformers). Thus, it has much less mutual inductance between the coils of both coils than conventional conventional transformers (the amplification of the induction coupling is just achieved due to the presence of a ferromagnetic core).

Thus, the capacitor and the primary coil constitute the oscillatory circuit. This includes a nonlinear component - a spark gap, which is two electrodes with a gap. A secondary coil also forms a similar circuit, but instead of a capacitor, a toroid is used here. It is the presence of two coupled oscillatory circuits and is the entire basis of the action of such an instrument as a resonant Tesla transformer.