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Originally Posted by regenfreak
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Below is the primary coil of my large tesla coil. To reduce heating and skin effect losses, I use 6mm copper tubes and 200A automobile battery cable and thick copper 2cm braids as earth cable. The peak RF ground current pulses are over 1000A based on software simulation. The resonance frequency is 150KHz. The copper tubes and the 200A cable get hot after a few minutes of operation. If the contact clip between the primary tapping in the photo is not good, you would get like scary arcing between the turns of primary coil. It happened to me a few times and it could set off fire.
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Sure thing! There are hundreds to thousands A of RF current circulating in that tank circuit at several Kilovolts, and the cabling to get there is lossy and will get warm.
And it's not surprising that you'll see flashovers beween bare adjacent turns of that flat spiral coil if you have a discontinuity in the mechanical connection under these conditions - just as if you were hard-switching, only by accident.
What I'm struggling with is the link between all this and your OP. I sense a wonderful focus on direct observation of things in real life vs. piles of maths, but I'm not sure what this is really all about, underneath the surface.
I'm sensing there is some depth of fascination and wonder, but can you help me link everything more clearly back to your original query?