Does this Tesla transformer look like it's capable of producing 5 MV?

jpsmith123, Sat Dec 01 2018, 01:32AM

I'm referring to the Tesla transformer depicted in fig. 5 of the following document:



I estimate a secondary inductance of 600 uH or something like that, and a primary inductance of 200 nH or something like that, in which case the step up ratio would be around 55, and the primary voltage can apparently be up to 100 kv.

Also, given the 21.5 cm diameter of the secondary capacitor, the 10 cm of oil between it and the case, the thickness of the case wall (supposedly 48 mm thick, but that seems way too thick, maybe it's a typo?), and the apparently high resonant frequency of the system, it seems plausible to me that the transformer could withstand 5 MV.

The highest transformer output voltage mentioned in the paper is 2.5 MV but it seems the authors didn't want to go any higher than this since they needed only 2.5 MV from the transformer in order to get a pulsed output of 5 MV.

My conclusion is that the transformer was probably designed to produce 5 MV, and it seems robust enough to be capable of it, but by varying the gap length of the liquid spark gap, the laser parameters and the primary charging voltage, the authors limited it to only 2.5 MV. Does this seem reasonable?


(I think I found a picture of the actual secondary winding of that transformer on page 19 of this document: )