design note · Voltage Intensifier Circuit · computed
VIC design session v9: reasoning
Lab notebook — VIC choke sweep, AWG18 @ 150t, session cont'd from AWG20 baseline
Bumping to AWG18 confirms the obvious: heavier wire drops coil AC resistance from 0.9Ω to 0.6-0.7Ω, and tank Q climbs from 64.4 to a 66.1-66.7 band across the top five. But the gain is flattening hard — going from 140t to 160t only moves Q by 0.6 and cell voltage by 8V, because at this cell geometry (1.29nF, 88.9kΩ water R) the tank is already dominated by the water's transformed series resistance, not coil loss. Coil Q itself is enormous (886-1013) and clearly not the limiting term anymore — we're pushing against the water dielectric's own Q ceiling. Diminishing returns confirmed: heavier wire helps, but not proportionally to the copper cost/winding effort.
Adopting #1 (140t, AWG18, 0.6Ω, tank Q 66.7, 801V, 643mA). It's the fewest turns of the winners (least wire, easiest wind), sits comfortably under the 1A limit with margin, and gives the top voltage in the set — no reason to add turns for the 0.6-0.8V/turn we lose going to 145-160t.
Next session: this sweep saturated on wire gauge; vary cell geometry instead (rod/tube gap, cell length) to actually change C and water R, since that's the real lever left. Also worth testing AWG16-17 to see if the Q-vs-water-R plateau is a hard wall or if there's another few percent before diminishing returns hit zero.
Basis
- Confidence
- 0.70
- Recorded
- Published
- 30 Aug 2026
- Device
- Voltage Intensifier Circuit
- Component
- choke
- Source Ref
- design session v9
- Notebook Id
- 1338
design-loop