Skin Effect

What is Skin Effect?

The tendency of alternating current to concentrate near a conductor's surface, raising effective resistance with frequency. At high enough frequencies current barely penetrates the core at all, which is why RF conductors are sometimes hollow or stranded as fine Litz wire.

The five clues

Engineerdle #32 described Skin Effect with five clues, revealed one at a time from hardest to most direct. Each clue points at a different property of the concept.

1. 01It gets worse as frequency rises.
2. 02It makes the effective resistance of a conductor higher than its DC value.
3. 03It's why high-frequency conductors are sometimes hollow or specially stranded.
4. 04Litz wire exists to defeat it.
5. 05Current crowds toward the outer surface of the conductor.

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