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Chapter 6
SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS
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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 1 IDENTIFYING SERIES-PARALLEL RELATIONSHIPS

▶ Series-parallel relationships

§ A series-parallel resistive circuit

§ R4 + in series with R1.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 1 IDENTIFYING SERIES-PARALLEL RELATIONSHIPS

§ R5 + in series with R2.

§ R6 + in parallel with the series combination of R1 and R4.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 2 ANALYSIS OF SERIES-PARALLEL RESISTIVE CIRCUITS

▶ Laws
§ Ohm’s law, Kirchhoff’s laws, the voltage-divider formula, and the current divider formula

▶ Find the total resistance

① Identify the series and parallel relationships.
② Determine total series and total parallel resistance.

Q : Determine RT between terminals A and B of the circuit

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 2 ANALYSIS OF SERIES-PARALLEL RESISTIVE CIRCUITS

▶ Find the total current

① The total resistance and the source voltage
② Ohm’s law , find the total current
▶ Find the branch current
① Current-divider formula, Kirchhoff’s current law, Ohm’s law, or combinations of these

Q: Determine the current through R4 if VS = 5.0 V

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 2 ANALYSIS OF SERIES-PARALLEL RESISTIVE CIRCUITS

▶ Find Voltage relationships ① Using the voltage divider formula

Q: Determine the voltage drop across each resistor

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 3 VOLTAGE DIVIDERS WITH RESISTIVE LOADS

▶ Loading § A voltage divider with both unloaded and loaded outputs

The output voltage is reduced by an

amount that depends on the value
of RL . This effect is called loading.

▶ The effect of loading

§ R2 < RL , the loading effect is small and the output voltage will change only a small amount
from its unloaded value. “MORE STABLE BUT MORE LOSS”
§ If the loading effect is small, the divider is said to be a stiff voltage divider. (10R2 = RL )

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 3 VOLTAGE DIVIDERS WITH RESISTIVE LOADS

▶ Load Current and Bleeder Current

§ In a multiple-tap loaded voltage-divider circuit,

the total current drawn from the source
consists of currents through the load resistors,
called load currents

§ Current I3 is called the bleeder current, which is

the current left after the total load current is
subtracted from the total current in the circuit.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 4 LOADING EFFECT OF A VOLTMETER

▶ Internal resistance of voltmeter

§ If RM is much greater than R3 the resistance from A to B changes very little, and the meter reading
is very close to the actual voltage. If RM is not sufficiently greater than R3 the resistance from A to
B is reduced significantly, and the voltage across R3 is altered by the loading effect of the meter.
§ If the meter resistance is at least ten times greater than the resistance across which it is
connected, the loading effect can be neglected (measurement error is less than 10% ).
§ The voltmeter in a DMM will typically have an internal resistance of 10 MΩ or more

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 5 THE WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

▶ Wheatstone Bridge
§ The Wheatstone bridge circuit can be used to precisely measure resistance. However, the
bridge is most commonly used in conjunction with transducers to measure physical
quantities such as strain, temperature, and pressure.

The bridge forms two back-to-back voltage dividers

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 5 THE WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

▶ The Balanced Wheatstone Bridge

§ When the output voltage between terminals A and B is equal to zero

Balanced Bridge

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 5 THE WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

▶ Using the Balanced Wheatstone Bridge to Find an Unknown Resistance

R2 & R4 are fixed

resistances
Unknown
Resistance Scale factor
Adjustable
Resistance
for balancing

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 5 THE WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

▶ The Unbalanced Wheatstone Bridge

§ The unbalanced bridge is used to measure several types of physical quantities such as
mechanical strain, temperature, or pressure.

§ The resistance of the transducer changes

proportionally to the changes in the
parameter that it is measuring.

§ If the bridge is balanced at a known point,

then the amount of deviation from the
balanced condition, as indicated by the
output voltage, indicates the amount of
change in the parameter being measured.
Unbalanced bridge

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 5 THE WHEATSTONE BRIDGE

Q : Determine the output voltage of the temperature-measuring bridge circuit if the thermistor
is exposed to a temperature of 50 °C and its resistance at 25 °C is 1.0 kΩ. Assume the resistance
of the thermistor decreases to 900 Ω at 50°C.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

▶ Thevenin’s theorem “Any two-terminal resistive circuit can be simplified to

a Thevenin equivalent regardless of its complexity”

VTH in series with RTH § The Thevenin equivalent voltage VTH is the open
circuit (no-load) voltage between two specified output
terminals in a circuit.

§ The Thevenin equivalent resistance RTH is the total

resistance appearing between two specified output
terminals in a circuit with all sources replaced by their
internal resistances (which for an ideal voltage source is
zero).
§ Although a Thevenin equivalent circuit is not of the same
Thevenin equivalent circuit form as the original circuit, it acts the same in terms of
the output voltage and current. = terminal equivalency

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

▶ Find the Thevenin equivalent

§ Thevenin equivalent voltage § Thevenin equivalent resistance

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

▶ Thevenin Equivalency (Viewpoint)

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

▶ Thevenizing a Bridge Circuit

§ Simplify the bridge circuit

A Wheatstone bridge
with a load resistor

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

Q: Determine the voltage and current for the load resistor, in the bridge circuit

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 6 THEVENIN’S THEOREM

▶ Summary of Thevenin’s Theorem

§ Step 1: Open the two terminals (remove any load) between which you want to find the
Thevenin equivalent circuit.
§ Step 2: Determine the voltage VTH across the two open terminals.

§ Step 3: Determine the resistance RTH between the two terminals with all sources replaced
by their internal resistance. (An ideal voltage source is replaced by a short.)
§ Step 4: Connect VTH and RTH in series to produce the complete Thevenin equivalent for the
original circuit
§ Step 5: Replace the load removed in Step 1 across the terminals of the Thevenin
equivalent circuit. You can now calculate the load current and load voltage using only
Ohm’s law, and they have the same value as the load current and load voltage in the
original circuit.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 7 THE MAXIMUM POWER TRANSFER THEOREM

▶ Maximum power transfer

“ For a given source voltage, maximum power is transferred from a source to a

load when the load resistance is equal to the internal source resistance”

The maximum power possible is transferred

from the voltage source to RL

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 7 THE MAXIMUM POWER TRANSFER THEOREM

Q: The source has an internal resistance of Determine the load power for each of the following values
of the variable load resistance, 0 Ω, 25 Ω, 50 Ω, 75 Ω, 100 Ω, 125 Ω. Draw a graph showing the load
power versus the load resistance

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 8 THE SUPERPOSITION THEOREM

▶ Superposition

“A way to determine currents in a circuit with multiple sources by leaving one

source at a time and replacing the other sources by their internal resistances”

§ Ideal voltage source has a zero internal resistance

§ Ideal current source has infinite internal resistance.
§ All sources will be treated as ideal in order to simplify the coverage

§ Superposition theorem : the current in any given branch of a multiple-source linear

circuit can be found by determining the currents in that particular branch produced
by each source acting alone, with all other sources replaced by their internal
resistances. The total current in the branch is the algebraic sum of the individual
source currents in that branch.

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 8 THE SUPERPOSITION THEOREM

▶ Superposition process
§ Step 1: Leave one voltage (or current) source at a time in the circuit and replace each of the
other voltage (or current) sources with its internal resistance. For ideal sources, a short
represents zero internal resistance and an open represents infinite internal resistance.

§ Step 2: Determine the particular current (or voltage) that you want to find just as if there
were only one source in the circuit. This is a component of the total current or voltage that
you are looking for.

§ Step 3: Take the next source in the circuit and repeat Steps 1 and 2 for each source.

§ Step 4: To find the actual current in a given branch (with all sources active), algebraically
add the results for all sources. Once you find this current, you can determine the voltage
using Ohm’s law

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 8 THE SUPERPOSITION THEOREM

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 8 THE SUPERPOSITION THEOREM

Q: Find the total current through and volage across R3

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Chapter 6 SERIES-PARALLEL CIRCUITS 8 THE SUPERPOSITION THEOREM

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