What is Skin Effect, Cause Of Skin Effect, Drawbacks, Avoid It

May 3, 2021February 21, 2022 Aditya Singu

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will discuss what is skin effect, causes of skin effect, drawbacks, how to avoid it, factors affecting it, and I will try to keep this article as simple as possible.

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What is Skin Effect

Skin effect: When ac current will flow through a conductor the current is concentrated at the surface of the conductor and at the center of the conductor has less current as compared to surface this is called as skin effect.

The alternating current flowing through the conductor is non-uniform because of the alternating current flowing through the surface is crowded and the current exponentially decreases through the conductor this effect is known as the skin effect.

Why skin effect occurs in a line?

When ac is flowing through the conductor then there induces a magnetic field in the conductor. The magnetic field linking with the conductor is near at the center is greater than that linking with another conductor near the surface of the conductor. This is due to the conductor internal and external flux as the surface of the conductor has linked with the external flux only the self-inductance at the internal of the conductor is more as compared to the external so, therefore it offers a greater inductive reactance at internal than the external the difference between the internal and external inductive reactance differs the current flow in the conductor. As this inductive reactance gives the tendency of current flow at the surface of the conductor is crowded and at the center of the conductorless due to the inductive reactance and induced magnetic field.

Internal effect:-

There flows a more flux then there is more opposition so, less current flows.

External effect:-

There flows a less flux then there is less opposition so, more current flows.

Skin effect is directly proportional to frequency, permittivity, the conductivity of the material, and the current flowing through the conductor.
Skin effect depends on the type of material, size, frequency.

Factors affecting skin effect:-

01. Nature of material:- Materials with the more magnetic permeability property show a high skin effect.

02. The diameter of the conductor:- If the diameter of the conductor increases then the skin effect of the conductor also increases because the skin effect is directly proportional to the diameter of the conductor.

03. The shape of the conductor:- The skin effect is less for a stranded conductor as compared to the solid conductor.

04. Frequency:- The skin effect is directly proportional to the frequency of the system. so, in the case of dc, there is no skin effect because there is no frequency in dc In the case of ac, we are using 50 Hz frequency so, there is a skin effect in the line as the frequency of the line increases then the skin effect also increases.

05. Length of the conductor:- As the length of the conductor increases then the skin effect also increases in the case of the short line there is a negligible amount of skin effect is there.

Drawbacks:-

It reduces the effective area of the conductor from which the current is flowing.
The overall resistance of the conductor is increased.
The resistance of the conductor is reduced by increasing the size of the conductor but the cost of the conductor is increased.

How to reduce the skin effect/how to overcome the skin effect:-

The skin effect is reduced when the conductor of the line has low magnetic permeability so, this type of conductor is costly as it is used for short lines.
Using less size of conductor results in a reduction of skin effect.
By Using bundled conductor, stranded conductors (like acsr).
By using high voltage systems because at the high voltages there is less current flows through the line so, as the current flowing through the conductor and skin effect is directly proportional then there is less skin effect because of less current.

I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading.

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