Skin Effect Calculator
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What is the Skin Effect?
The Skin Effect was first described in a paper by Horace Lamb in 1883 for the case of spherical conductors, and was generalized to conductors of any shape by Oliver Heaviside in 1885.
When an electromagnetic wave interacts with a conductive material, mobile charges within the material are made to oscillate back and forth with the same frequency as the impinging fields. The movement of these charges, usually electrons, constitutes an alternating electric current, the magnitude of which is greatest at the conductor's surface. The decline in current density versus depth is known as the skin effect and the skin depth is a measure of the distance over which the current falls to 1/e of its original value.
Skin Effect has practical consequences in the design of radio-frequency and microwave circuits and to some extent in AC electrical power transmission and distribution systems. It is also important in designing discharge tube circuits.
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