"Jon Mcleod" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

the problem is, do you want the field 'inside' the meat, or in the air
around the meat? The problem is made harder because the steak is not
only a dielectric material, which changes the magnitude of the field, but
is also moderately conductive, which essentially shorts out the field.
also, the properties depend on the direction of the field... you might
want to see if your library has this article:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freea...rnumber=300250 .
personally i would probably go the other way and suspend the meat on an
insulating net horizontally and put a plate above and below it that are
bigger than the steak. it is much easier to generate a uniform field
between large parallel conductive plates than with wires... as a first
approximation make the plates about double the largest dimension of the
steak. it may be acceptible to set the steak on one of the plates
(sterilize it first) and just suspend the other one above it.

Thank you! In hindsight, obviously applying a field top to bottom will be
easier than side-to-side!

I need to research it, but I should be able to calculate the voltage
required to generate the 1v/cm field in the steak if I know the dielectric
constant of the "meat"...

One question, what if the plates both touch the steak and I use a smaller
voltage? I guess since steak is conductive, keeping the plates at a 1V/cm
potential may actually sink a lot of current through the steak and cook it
after all.

yes, that would be much harder and may result in cooking.. better to keep an
air gap.