Talk-Polywell.org

I was thinking, depending on the flux, which I'm guess if all goes well, should be huge, to measure the flux of alpha coming from fusion reactions, we can make a polywell-like shaped diagnostic device of just 6 rogowski coils taped together. It has to be bigger than the WB machines.

Just a thought.

Robthebob wrote:I was thinking, depending on the flux, which I'm guess if all goes well, should be huge, to measure the flux of alpha coming from fusion reactions, we can make a polywell-like shaped diagnostic device of just 6 rogowski coils taped together. It has to be bigger than the WB machines.

Just a thought.

Well, I had to look it up-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogowski_coil

Works for AC or pulsed current, I'm not sure it would work for steady state outflow of alpha particles (DC current). In a pulsed research reactor I could see it giving information perhaps more acurrate than trying to count the alpha particles with some other methods such as sintellation, plastic pits, or geiger counters.

Dan Tibbets

because it has no iron core to saturate, it is highly linear even when subjected to large currents

An interesting investigation may be their application to high power AC protection.

For my study one the final projects on the table is dealing with CTs (current transformers) that saturate during normal events like transformer in-rush. One usual method of restraining the protection from tripping is looking at the pattern of the harmonics to distinguish between fault currents and in-rush currents. A saturated CT distorts the waveforms and can cause nuisance tripping. This is why there are separate designs for metering and protection CTs.

Regardless of what type of current it is, if it's flow of charge, it will detect it. I think, also, the thing about rogowski coils is that they are extremely cheap, like, you can make one, including the integrating circuit, for under 100 bucks.

Oh yeah, I was thinking, since polywell machines are supposed to be symmetrical, I guess you can just have one big coil positioned in the right place and times that by 6 to get the total flux.

I believe one might also add a very small contamination of beryllium to the reaction volume, and fast alphas will release [detectable] gammas when they interact with the beryllium contamination. This has been reported in tokamak projects.

chrismb wrote:I believe one might also add a very small contamination of beryllium to the reaction volume, and fast alphas will release [detectable] gammas when they interact with the beryllium contamination. This has been reported in tokamak projects.

?? what are you talking about?

Regardless of what type of current it is, if it's flow of charge, it will detect it.

Nope. No dv/dt no induced voltage. It is like a law of magnetics or something.

Maybe you are thinking Hall effect.

Opps, I meant to say, regardless of what type of current, if there's a changing current flow, it will "detect" it by displaying voltage. The current is then proportional to the sum of voltage over time.

When you start the reaction, obviously, there's no current, no flux of alphas, when you put in the fuel, then you should see alphas flying out of the polywell machine, in which case, you will see a change of current flow, from zero to whatever amount of current corresponding to the max flux, sum up all the voltage signal from zero to that value corresponding to the max flux, then you got your current.

I mean I've never tried to put a closed rogowski coil in front of a alpha particle accelerator and see if you can get data from it, my guess? Yes.

Robthebob wrote:Opps, I meant to say, regardless of what type of current, if there's a changing current flow, it will "detect" it by displaying voltage. The current is then proportional to the sum of voltage over time.

When you start the reaction, obviously, there's no current, no flux of alphas, when you put in the fuel, then you should see alphas flying out of the polywell machine, in which case, you will see a change of current flow, from zero to whatever amount of current corresponding to the max flux, sum up all the voltage signal from zero to that value corresponding to the max flux, then you got your current.

I mean I've never tried to put a closed rogowski coil in front of a alpha particle accelerator and see if you can get data from it, my guess? Yes.

That is correct. BTW you need to put a load on the RG coil to make things work out IIRC. Just like a current transformer.

sounds like this can be my PhD paper, using Rogowski coils as a form of diagnostic for polywell machines.