Bifilar coil

A bifilar coil is an electromagnetic coil that contains two closely spaced, parallel windings. In engineering, the word bifilar describes wire which is made of two filaments or strands. It is commonly used to denote special types of winding wire for transformers. Wire can be purchased in bifilar form, usually as different colored enameled wire bonded together. For three strands, the term trifilar coil is used.

Some bifilars have adjacent coils in which the convolutions are arranged so that the potential difference is magnified (i.e., the current flows in same parallel direction). Others are wound so that the current flows in opposite directions. The magnetic field created by one winding is therefore equal and opposite to that created by the other, resulting in a net magnetic field of zero (i.e., neutralizing any negative effects in the coil). In electrical terms, this means that the self-inductance of the coil is zero.

The bifilar coil (more often called the bifilar winding) is used in modern electrical engineering as a means of constructing wire-wound resistors with negligible parasitic self-inductance.

A different type of bifilar coil is used in some relay windings and transformers used for a switched-mode power supply to suppress back-emf. In this case, the two wire coils are closely spaced and wound in parallel but are electrically isolated from each other. The primary coil is driven to operate the relay, and the secondary coil is short-circuited inside the case. When the current through the primary is interrupted, as happens when the relay is switched off, most of the magnetic energy is intercepted by the secondary coil which converts it to heat in its internal resistance. This is only one of several methods of absorbing the energy from the primary coil before it can damage the device (usually a vulnerable semiconductor) that drives the relay. The main disadvantage of this method is that it greatly increases the switching time of the relay.

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