Maxwell Bridge Inductance Capacitance Bridge

This bridge is used to find out the self inductance and the quality factor of the circuit. As it is based on the bridge method (i.e. works on the principle of null deflection method), it gives very accurate results. Maxwell Bridge is an AC bridge so before going in further detail let us know more about the ac bridge.

AC Bridges
AC Bridges consist of a source, balance detector and four arms. In AC bridges, all the four arms consists of impedance. The AC bridges are formed by replacing the DC battery with an AC source and galvanometer by detector of Wheatstone Bridge.They are highly useful to find out inductance, capacitance, storage factor, dissipation factor etc. Now let us derive general expression for an AC bridge balance Figure given below shows AC bridge network:

AC Bridge

Here Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 are the arms of the bridge.

Now at the balance condition, the potential difference between b and d must be zero. From this, when the voltage drop from from a to d equals to drop from a to b both in magnitude and phase. Thus, we have from figure e1 = e2

From equation 1, 2 and 3 we have Z1.Z4 = Z2.Z3 and when impedance are replaced by admittance, we have Y1.Y4 = Y2.Y3. Now consider the basic form of an AC bridge: Suppose we have bridge circuit as shown below,

In this circuit R3 and R4 are pure resistances. Putting the value of Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 in the equation that we have derived above for AC bridge. Now equating the real and imaginary parts we get

Following are the important conclusions that can be drawn from the above equations: (a) We get two balanced equations that are obtained by equating real and imaginary parts this means that for an ac bridge both the relation (i.e.magnitude and phase) must be satisfied at the same time. Both the equations are said to be independent if and only if both equation contain single variable element. This variable can be inductor or resistor. (b) The above equations are independent of frequency that means we do not require exact frequency of the source voltage and also the applied source voltage waveform need not to be perfectly sinusoidal.