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Re: Cable inductance......Vs......cable imbalance.

Posted by jneutron (A) on August 25, 2004 at 07:19:18

In Reply to: Cable inductance......Vs......cable imbalance. posted by Tony Montana on August 24, 2004 at 23:05:09:

Hi Tony...your killin me...a pic, some equations, and some simulations would make it so clear...but you balked at a drawing last time...:-)

You are mixing up the use of imbalanced..

For a wire pair, like a coax, or zip, the current goes down one wire, and back the other...since they are in series, each wire carries exactly the same current..

For a coaxial pair, the currents are still identical, even though the center may be a different guage than the shield..with different resistance, the magnetic field will still cancel outside the shield. Even though there will be a different voltage drop on each wire, the magnetic field is determined by the current..

You have mixed into the fray...JR's cross coax cable...while it uses coaxial wire, the way he has connected it causes the current each way to divide into two paths..since the paths have the same voltage from end to end, the current through each path will depend on the resistance of the paths..So, within each coax, there will be a center wire current that is different from the opposite direction shield current...so there is a net current flowing within each coaxial cable..it is that net current that makes the construct produce an external magnetic field.

Inductance is the measure of the total field energy contained within a magnetic field that is produced by a current..the equation is:

E=¹/₂*L*I²

or

L= (2 * E) / I²

Hope that was clear.. :-)

Cheers, John

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