160,000-Ampere high-speed magnetic-amplifier design

THE PAST 8 years, with the advent of improved semiconductor rectifiers and the availability of high quality magnetic materials have seen greatly renewed interest in the static magnetic amplifier. Current literature offers a number of articles on magnetic-amplifier theory, with a smaller number of reports available on design and application. It is interesting and perhaps a little puzzling to note that in spite of the fact that saturable reactors in the early 1900´s were chiefly employed as relatively large power regulating devices, the present-day trend of magnetic-amplifier application has been toward small to moderate signal and power control. The controlled power design tendency has been to use low-level static magnetic amplifiers driving higher power rotating magnetic amplifiers such as rotatrols, amplydynes, and conventional generators or controlling electronic converters such as thyratrons or ignitions. The rationale of this arrangement is sometimes obscure when we consider that the static amplifier has been chosen for the low-level application because of its simplicity, dependability, versatility, etc., while the same characteristics plus high efficiency, low cost, and long life are often overlooked in determining the higher power converting-controlling element.