Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Combinations of Inductors
Inductors connected in series are added normally
Example:
If inductors are connected in parallel, they add in reciprocal
Example:
***
First Order Circuits
RC Circuit a circuit comprising a resistor and a capacitor
RL Circuit a circuit comprising a resistor and inductor
Capacitors and inductors are storage elements
Two ways to excite a first-order circuit:
Through initial conditions of the storage elements (source-free circuits)
Through the independent sources
Source-free circuits we assume that energy is initially stored in the capacitive or
inductive element.
Source-free circuits may have dependent sources, but do not have independent sources.
The Source-Free RC Circuit
The natural respond depends on the nature of the circuit alone, with no external sources. In
fact, the circuit has a response only because of the energy initially stored in the capacitor.
Voltage response of the RC circuit:
(unit in seconds)
In terms of the time constant,
The Source-Free RL Circuit
Consider the series connection of a resistor and an inductor as shown in the circuit below. Our
goal is to determine the circuit response, which we will assume to be the current i(t) through
the inductor. We select the inductor current as the response in order to take advantage of the
idea that the inductor has an initial current I
0
, or
()
As shown on the graph below, the natural response of the RL circuit is an exponential decay of
the initial current.
The time constant for the RL circuit is:
Thus, the current in terms of the time constant is:
When a circuit has a single inductor and several resistors and dependent sources, the Thevenin
equivalent can be found at the terminals of the inductor to form a simple RL circuit. Also,, one
can use Thevenins theorem when several inductors can be combined to form a single
equivalent inductor.