A finer detailed look using an oscilloscope
A finer detailed look using an oscilloscope
110109-1745 EST
To repeat some points I have made in various threads.
Instantaneously the current thru an inductor can not change.
From my statement above that one characteristic of an inductor is that the current can not instantaneously change this means that at the instant just after the switch is closed the current will still be zero. However, starting at that point, t=0, the current does start to rise. The voltage across the R and L instantaneously rises to the battery voltage, and also this is the instantaneous voltage across the ideal inductor because current is 0.
The rate of rise of current is determined by the L/R ratio. For a fixed resistance the larger L is the slower is the current rise, and vice versa. These experiments are simple to run with an oscilloscope.
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Here is a picture to help visualize what Gar has emphasized. The fact that "inrush" current in a motor does not occur instantaneously.
These show the advantage of sampling at a much faster rate using an oscilloscope. If you were sampling much slower the current might appear to rise instantaneously. When sampling fast enough you can see that it does indeed take some finite time for the current to rise.
These were tests done on a 24Vdc motor with a LRA of 44 amps. A current limited power supply was being used and set at ~11 amps.
In the top test you can see that when the pulse applied was very short the current does not reach a very high value. A second longer pulse is applied and the current rises until the set current limit value was reached.
(still lower then locked rotor)
The bottom figure shows a wirewound resistor of approximately the same "DC" resistance value as the motor.
NOTE: time and amperage scales are different from top view"
Here the rise time of the current is much faster and helps illustrate the effect of the motors larger inductance.
Although these tests were done on a DC motor they demonstrate what you might see if you were taking a very close look at an AC motor energized near a peak of the sinewave.