Electronics > Beginners

understanding zener and high side switching

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coppercone2:
if their weird shaped can you use multi variable calculus in a predicable way to figure it out with gradient fields?  like say for one made of rods.

idk how to say this, can you break it up into a bunch of small plates that don't effect each other (real small so flatness can be approximated small) or does it lead to some kind of nonlinearity (sacrificial behavior)? like the presence of the closer areas means the further areas won't be erroded as expected by distance.

Ian.M:
The mass of metal eroded from the anode by the transfer of a known charge is going to be pretty reliable, but from there on the distribution of the erosion across the  electrode surface is pretty much a wild-assed guess.   e.g if a biofilm forms on the insulator supporting two partially or occasionally immersed rod electrodes, and stays wet due to ambient conditions, it may have a low enough resistance that the anode erodes at the root and drops off long before its immersed surface is significantly eroded.

In theory, in a electrolyte of uniform conductivity,  the electric field at any point in the electrolyte can be calculated solely from the geometry and applied voltage, then the current density for any small area on an electrode's surface can be solved for.  However the maths is extremely intractable except for simple geometries like long concentric cylinders or parallel plates that are large compared to their separation.
Also, in the real world, ionic mobility and surface polarisation will be  significant and the electrolyte is  rarely uniform due to temperature gradients and local concentration differences.   

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