Skin Effect and shape of conductor

likephysics

Let's say we have 2 different conductors - one a round wire, another a round wire but with hollow core.
The wire with the hollow core has higher resistance. But for the sake of argument, lets assume that it has the same resistance and the round wire.
Will the skin effect be less for the hollow wire?

phinds

Been a long time since I did fundamental electronics, but as I recall, when operating at high skin effect frequencies, it doesn't matter if there is a core since none of the current is in it.

yungman

I can't speculate about different resistance of the two wires you described. But in general , under high frequency, the hollow core wire should conduct better as it has two surface area.......inside and outside. Solid core only has the outer surface.

marcusl

I never heard this before. Do you have references?

yungman

What reference? I am just talking about hollow wire has two surface, the inner and outer surface and both carry current. So for the same diameter wire, you have almost double the surface area ( or width) for conducting current. Nothing more than that.
Just a very general comment without getting into the specific conductance and all.

phinds

It was my impression that the skin effect drives all the current to the outer surface, so an inner surface would be irrelevant. Do you know otherwise, as you stated?

yungman

Thats a good question!!! My understanding is as long as you have a surface, you have the current. You connect the wire at two ends, the current start to flow, then the field developed and all current goes to the surface.

It is like the litz wire, it does not matter the particular wire is in the middle of the bundle, you start the current from one end, it goes equally to each wire, then because of the E field attenuation, the current stay on the surface of each wire. That should works for the inner surface of the hollow wire here.

If the logic of the inner surface of the hollow wire don't carry current, that means the only the outer strands of the bundle of litz wires at the connector wire interface conduct current, the strands that are in the middle never get the current.

Itn't inner surface the same as output surface? it's a surface and surface current flows?

I don't know, just my logical deduction. I am no expert, let me know, I love to learn.

marcusl

Yungman, I wish you'd be a little more careful with answers in areas where you are not expert. The skin effect is exactly as phinds said: at high frequencies all current flows on the outer skin of the conductor, which is why hollow conductors can be used without increased loss. So-called "semirigid" coax for microwave use is an example. It often uses a steel center wire--which is a terrible conductor, but is inexpensive and strong--coated with a few microns of expensive silver, which has the highest conductivity of any metal, on its outer surface. All the current flows in the silver due to the skin effect.

Bob S

See picture of skin depth in http://www.rfcafe.com/references/ele...skin-depth.htm
It varies as 1/f^1/2.
At high frequencies it is a few microns. See table of skin depths at
http://www.rfcafe.com/references/ele...-high-freq.htm

yungman

I know skin effect on the surface. OP is talking about a hollow wire, why is the inner surface of a hollow conductor wire not conducting current? Is it because there is no field inside the hollow wire?

jim hardy

i though your mention of Litz wire was right on.

In my utility scale generator(20Kiloamps) the conductors were long hollow rectangular tubes maybe five by ten inches made of square strands (perhaps 1/4 inch) stacked together and insulated like giant Litz wire.
The strands were intertwined so they did not run full length, about forty feet, in same location but ran partway near inner surface and partway near outer surface.
Cooling gas was forced down the center passageway.

So the inner surface of that rectangular tube conductor certainly had current. But it was only 60hz.

Bob S

I fully concur. The skin effect completely shields the inside of the conductors from carrying ang RF current. It is just a form of Lenz's Law. See Equation (4) in http://www.ultracad.com/articles/skin%20effect.pdf

marcusl

No. The concentration of current to the outside of the conductor is related to flux linkage between fields generated by currents at different radii, and to Lenz's law.
Litz wire is not relevant to the original question about solid conductors, Jim. It is, furthermore, useful only at low frequencies where capacitive coupling between turns is small. Strands located near the center of Litz wire still want to carry little current, requiring the strands to be woven so as to alternate between center and exterior of bundle, as Jim said, in order to create some reasonable average current flow. The original question was about solid conductors, however, and there's still no escaping the skin effect there--the interior carries no current at sufficiently high frequencies, allowing it to be eliminated without affecting the AC resistance. All current then flows on the exterior in a thin skin. If some current is still flowing on the interior surface, then the frequency is too low for the skin effect to be in full play.

yungman

I think I find the answer, in a closed cavity inside the conductor, there is no field, so there is no current in the inner surface of the hollow conductor.

Can you provide reference on why the inner strands of Litz wire don't conduct? I do not see any explanation in EM books.

marcusl

No that is not the reason. If the thickness of the annular conductor is less than the skin depth, then the inside surface carries some current even though B=0 in the hole. The reason is due to flux linkage.
To clarify my earlier statement on Litz wire: A small strand at the center of a uniform bundle of strands would find itself with flux linkage analogous to the solid case, reducing its current flow. The key to Litz wire, however, is the weave that brings each strand from center to outside and back as you move down the wire's length. Each strand ends up as an average of inner and outer, so all strands carry the same current. You can find the skin effect in round conductors discussed in most E&M texts, but I have no references to Litz wire.

yungman

I am still digging up notes. My understanding is all signals travel as EM wave. PCB trace, coax, even a wire is really a guided structure for EM wave to propagate. Signal voltage and current are the consequence of boundary condition of E and B. True current in form of electrons CANNOT travel in any speed as given by [itex] v_p=μ\vec E \hbox { where μ is the mobility.}[/itex]. It is only EM wave propagation that give the speed we see in circuit.

I am still having a hard time relating Lentz Law, flux linkage to EM propagation. The books I have derive skin depth and attenuation constant using EM wave, not with magnetics.

marcusl

Yes, we derive the skin effect mathematically with Maxwell's equations and vector calculus. Did you get a good mental picture of why the skin effect occurs by looking at the modified Bessel functions, or ber and bei functions? It's not easy to gain intuition that way. Faraday thought in terms of "flux tube" linkage, which I mentioned because it can provide an intuitive picture of how the effect works. Magnetic field lines (or tubes, as Faraday called them) from current at the wire center link with those flowing in thin shells at greater radii to produce an emf that opposes the current at the center and reinforces it at the surface.