Electric field limits for vacuum breakdown

In a previous post, I spoke of useful design information that is oddly difficult to find on the Internet. In that case the topic was saturation curves for common soft magnetic materials. I recently had a similar experience in another application area — the maximum sustainable electric field in vacuum devices. The issue is critical for [...]

Minimizing electric field on coaxial electrodes

To reduce the possibility of breakdowns, a common goal in high-voltage engineering is to minimize peak electric field values on electrodes for a given voltage. One example is the choice of conductor and shield radii for a coaxial cable. For a given shield radius ro, what choice of the conductor radius ri gives the lowest electric? [...]

Modeling a sectored radial magnet with Magnum

In the tutorial Designing permanent-magnet solenoids with PerMag, I discussed how permanent magnets with radial magnetization could be used to generate a solenoid field. An annular magnet with pure radial magnetization is impossible to fabricate with modern high-energy-product materials. Instead, it must be approximated with a set of Ns wedge sectors, each with linear magnetization. There [...]

Saturation curves for common soft magnetic materials

As I mentioned in the previous article, I found it difficult to find saturation curves for common soft magnetic materials by searching the Internet. To help, I decided to share the data I have accumulated over a 20 year period. Here is a link to the data:

http://www.fieldp.com/magneticproperties.html/

Values are  listed in text format so you can copy [...]

Sheet beams for the People

Sheet-beam electron injectors have long been used for industrial processing. Devices for such applications generally have a large cross-section area and relatively low-current density with minimal requirements on beam quality. Their development has been largely empirical. There has been considerable recent interest in sheet electron beams to drive innovative high-frequency, high-power microwave sources. These applications require [...]