PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - alternators and the battery
View Single Post
Old 12th March 2010 | 14:04
  #30 (permalink)  
IO540
20 Anniversary
 
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
The alternator with its voltage regulator forms a constant voltage power supply.

The alternator itself, with a constant field current, and a constant resistance load, will generate a voltage roughly proportional to RPM. This is no good, which is why the voltage regulator is added, and this varies the field current so as to keep the output voltage relatively constant.

The regulator is usually rather primitive which is why the resulting voltage is not perfectly constant. However, in my TB20 I am getting 28.something and it varies over a fraction of a volt only.

The regulator doesn't drop the alternator output voltage. The output voltage still comes directly from the alternator output. The regulator controls that voltage by varying the field current, which is much lower than the normal load current.
IO540 is offline  
Reply