Prolonging the lifetime of a compact multi-wire-layered secondary winding in the Tesla transformer

A compact multi-wire-layered secondary winding for the Tesla transformer was proposed by Zhao et al. [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88(5), 055112 (2017)]. The basic idea is to wind multiple layers of a metal wire around a polymeric base tube. However, the lifetime of this type of winding is only about 200 000 pulses, and thus it fails to meet the requirement of a lifetime of 1 × 10⁶ pulses. In this study, two methods are developed to prolong the lifetime of this winding. One method involves replacing the original three-skin wire with a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) wire. The results of small-scale experiments in different conditions show that the lifetime of the PTFE-covered copper wire is at least ten times longer than that of the three-skin wire. The other method involves improving the local structure of this winding. A strong mechanical stress is concentrated at the small end of the winding, and a highly intense electric field appears in this region, where both reduce the lifetime of the winding. Improving the local structure of the winding theoretically prolongs its lifetime by a factor of 4. Both methods were applied to the original secondary winding of a Tesla transformer and extended its theoretical lifetime by a factor of 40. The modified winding had a lifetime longer than 2 × 10⁶ pulses without any traces of discharge. This is equivalent to a lifetime longer than that of the original winding by a factor of 10 and verifies the effectiveness of the proposed methods.