Alternators.

So as I said, on my blog before this, new week means new things to learn and today I learnt about Alternators.

During practical work, the lecturer gave me, well everyone really, an idea of what an alternator is and what its for. So first of all I'm gonna start off with my understanding of what an alternator is, if there is anything that is missing, or anything that I happen to misunderstand, please correct me and comment below :D.

So what I understood from the lecture was that an alternator does is that it is a component that charges the battery. But how does it work?? Well, we pretty much took everything off and our lecturer explained everything to us.

It starts of from the Roto, as he first explained. What the roto does is that it creates the magnetic field in the alternator, though i don't really understand the term of magnetic field but from the top of my head, it helps produce electricity I guess.. anyways, so the roto creates a magnetic field so that it can create electricity and when theres electricity, there is current, and with current it needs a place to flow onto. Which is why the slip rings are there for. The wires in the alternator are there for the current to flow in and the kind current thats flowing through the wires is AC current though the battery needs DC current coming in which is why the diodes are there for. What the diodes do is they change the AC current into DC currents, but how does this current flow onto the battery? Well, thats the regulators job. What the regulator does is that it controls the voltage from the alternator and also gives out the voltage to the battery using the brush in the alternator. It has a system of where it gives out the voltage when the battery is lacking for some pressure and when the battery doesn't need the pressure, it stops giving out the voltage. Yes, the alternator does have a fan because a very common reason is that it will overheat if you don't keep it cool. If the fan is broken then the diode will get too hot and break off from the alternator.

So that's what I've learnt through my lecturer, I did some more research on google about alternators because I wasn't quite sure of what I understood about them and here's what I found out.

I found out that the alternator isn't the one that gives power to the battery, well it does help, but most of the power comes from the gas tank. The alternator is the one that pretty much connects the gas tank to the battery.

What turns on the Alternator? Well what turns it on is the power you get from the crank shaft and the one that transmits the power it is the fan belt. So the function of the alternator is that it converts the power from the gas tank into electricity.

I also found out that the name, "alternator" was made because of how it produces (AC) alternating current. Like I said earlier, the battery can't use alternating current, so the diodes eat the output of the alternating currents and changes it to direct current (DC).

Further research shows that there are two common elements in an Alternator. The stationary stator and the rotating rotor.

The stator has 3 sets of wires that are wraped/wound around the iron frame. One of each from the 3 sets of wires in the stator have seven coils in them and with those have different loops. Each coil and loops are connected so that you can increase the total voltage output that you get from the crank shaft. There should only be 2 leads in the stator.

The rotor is made out of a shaft, a coil of wire, 2 interweaving irons and 2 slip rings to connect the coil of wire to the car battery. It's the one that pretty much rotates around in the alternator.

Now how does it change from AC to DC?
Well first of all, the battery can't take AC because AC keeps switching from positive to negative. Thats where the Diodes come into use. There are 6 diodes in an alternator and two from the 6 diodes are used with each phase and from the two, one should be taking positive and the other, negative. So what happens then is that from the 1st 180 degree rotation from the rotor, comes the positive electron which then goes onto one of the 7 stator coils in the alternator. Then the 2nd rotation from the rotor comes a negative electron which goes onto another stator coil. So with that system going, the alternate current is now changing to direct current. This term is called RECTIFICATION.

With all that said, the last component remaining is the voltage regulator. It is put there for it to figure out how much energy that is needed to be taken out from the diodes. In the regulator, there is a sensor which is usually connected to the positive post of the battery. If it finds out that the battery needs more voltage, it'll send a signal back to the rotor to produce more energy thus having more energy in the stator coils.

To conclude this blog, I guess, I did have an idea of how an alternator works from the notes I had put down on my notebook though it wasn't clear. Through my research, it has shown me how the Alternator works and now I pretty much have an understanding of how it works.

Thank you for reading this blog, sorry for the bordem :D.

Resources:
http://www.misterfixit.com/alterntr.htm
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-do-Alternators-Work&id=581496