Title essentially. What advantage does having loads of fibres have over one solid piece? Flexibility?
In: Physics
In general, the electrical power that is supplied to households and for most industrial uses is “Alternating Current’ or AC.
One of the properties of AC is that it has tendency to flow on the outer surface of any conductor. This phenomenon is called the ‘skin effect’.
That means that the flow of AC is most concentrated near the outer circumference of a wire, instead of being evenly distributed throughout the whole cross-section of the wire. This tendency increases with the frequency of AC.
To take advantage of the skin effect, a cable will be made out of numerous fine wires instead of one thick wire, in order to increase the surface area of the conductor for the same amount of the material.
A multi-strand wire also offers more mechanical strength then a single-strand wire. Is more flexible and resilient to damage.
Latest Answers