Capacitors in circuits

Linear Circuit Theory

Naehyuck Chang
naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In DC circuits
 RC time constant
 Time interval that equals the product of the resistance and the
capacitance: =RC
 Charging and discharging curves

 Charging from zero and discharging to zero

t t
 
v  VF (1  e RC
) v  VF  (Vi  VF )e 

t t
 
v  Vi e RC i  I F  ( I i  I F )e 

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In DC circuits
 How long will it take the
initially uncharged capacitors
to charge to 75V?

Use of the normalized universal

exponential curve chart?
Or, use of differential equations?

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In DC circuits
 Summary
 Transient response
 Steady-state response
 Steady-state response in DC circuits
 Capacitors are open components
 Trivial soultions

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In AC circuits
 Transient response
 Use of differential equations
 Third stage in this lecture
 Steady-state response
 Use of phasors
 Underlying principle
 Capacitor current is proportional to the capacitance and the ra
te of the voltage change across the capacitor
dv
i  C( )
dt

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In AC circuits
 Sinusoidal voltage
 Derivative of the sine wave

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 In AC circuits
 Reactance, XC
 Opposition to sinusoidal current
 Expressed in 
 Proportional to 1/f
 Proportional to 1/fC

1
XC 
2fC

 Example
 1KHz
 5KHz

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 In AC circuits
 Analysis of capacitive AC circuits
 XC?

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In AC circuits
 Power in a capacitor
 Instantaneous power (p)
 The product of V and I
 Positive and negative power
 Positive power indicates that the energy is stored by the capacitor
 Negative power indicates that the energy is returned from the ca
pacitor
 Power fluctuation is twice that of the voltage or current
 True power (Ptrue)
 Ideally, all the stored energy in the capacitor is returned to the so
urce
 No true power
 In real world, leakage current and the ESL and ESR consume true
power
SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 In AC circuit
 Power in a capacitor
 Reactive power (Pr)
 The rate at which a capacitor stores or returns energy
 Non-zero quantity
 Does not represents an energy loss
 Unit is volt-ampere reactive (VAR)

Pr  Vrms I rms
2
Vrms
Pr 
XC
Pr  I rms
2
XC

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 Capacitor applications
 Electrical storage
 Backup source
 Power supply filtering

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr
 Capacitor applications
 DC blocking and AC coupling

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 Capacitor applications
 Power line decoupling
 Bypassing
 Signal filtering
 Timing circuits
 Computer memories

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 Testing
 Ohmmeter check

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 Assignments
 P13-35
 P13-37
 P13-38
 P13-41
 P13-42
 P13-46
 P13-52

SNU naehyuck@snu.ac.kr