Why would an electrical relay hum?
The use of laminations in an ac relay reduces the heating due to eddy currents. In addition, a copper strap or ring (called a shorted turn) is placed near the end of the pole piece of an ac relay to reduce chatter during operation. Because the ac is going through a peak, dropping to zero, going through a peak in the opposite direction, and then dropping to zero again during each complete cycle, the coil tends to release the armature each time the current drops to zero and attracts the armature each time it reaches a peak. The shorted turn acts as the secondary of a transformer, the primary of which is the relay operating coil. The current in the shorted turn is out of phase with the current of the operating coil because the copper ring has low-inductive reactance. Thus, when the operating coil flux is zero, the flux produced by the shorted coil is different from zero, and the tendency of the relay to chatter is reduced.
