Source Transformation

By: Krishan Bansal

Overview:

This lab will be investigating the concept of source transformation. A source

transformation is when a voltage source in series with a resistor is mathematically/physically
transformed into an equivalent circuit with a current source is in parallel with a resistor. This
method is used to simplify circuits during circuit analysis. In this lab 2 circuits will be
constructed, one with a voltage source in series with a resistor, and one with a constant current
source. The resistors in both circuits will be the same, and the amperage on the current source
for the parallel circuit will be determined through using V=IR where V is the voltage source in
the series circuit, and R is the equivalent resistance. Each circuit will have 2 resistors, one
standard resistor, and one load resistor which will be the component that current is measured
across. Once the circuits are connected, if the experiment has been done correctly, the current
and voltage across the load resistor should be the same in both of the circuits. To get a constant
current supply for the parallel circuit, a voltage source will be used to limit the current in the
parallel circuit to the theoretical calculated amount.

Figure 1: Voltage/amperage transformation represented by circuit diagrams.

Experimental Setup and Results:

The experiment itself will be conducted virtually in TinkerCad. The materials used with
be 2 power supplies (1 per circuit), 2 resistors per circuit, 1 ammeter (per circuit), and 1
voltmeter (per circuit). The power supply for the parallel circuit will be set to constant current
mode to simulate the mathematically equivalent current source determined by V = IR. A voltage
source of 3V will used for the series circuit, resistor 1 (R1) will be 3 ohms, the load resistor RL
will have 1 ohm of resistance. This gives a total equivalent resistance of 4 ohms, using V = IR the
current calculated of the whole circuit should be .750 amps. The current through the 3 ohm
resistor should be 1 amp. This current will then be applied as the one which will be limiting
value in the parallel circuit, and it is based on the current through R1. The current created here
will be used as the current source value for the parallel circuit. The voltmeters will be
connected in parallel to the load resistors, and the ammeters will be connected in series so the
normal circuit values are not disturbed by them. The results are shown below.

Figure 2: Series (left) and parallel (right) circuits that are equivalent. R1 = 3 ohms, RL = 1 ohm,
Voltage supply for the series circuit is 3 volts.
Figure 3: The same circuit configuration as figure 2 but tested with an input voltage of 6V. This
test was done to demonstrate further that the principle of source transformation is
demonstrated by the circuits.

Figure 4: Circuit diagrams of the series (left) and parallel (right) circuits with voltage supplies..
Analysis:

From the results in figure 2 it is clear that the principle of source transformation has been
accurately demonstrated by the experiment. The current and voltage measured across the load
resistor (RL = 1 ohm) is the same in both the series and the parallel circuits. Current of the load
resistor is .75 A, and the voltage is .75 V in both circuits. The only thing that changed was the
way the power was supplied to the circuit, in the series circuit a simply 3 V DC power source
went across the circuit, for the parallel circuit a constant current source must be used, so the
maximum current through the circuit (at R1 where I = 1 A) was gotten by limiting the voltage
supply in the parallel circuit to .75 mV, giving a maximum constant current supply of 1 amp. The
6 volt input test in Figure 3 was a repeat of this with the same resistor values to ensure that this
source transformation worked for other power configurations. As with the 3V circuit, the
ammeters and voltmeters of the 6V configuration all read 1.5 A and 1.5 V respectively, thus
confirming the principle of source transformation.