Communication Lab Assignment: Series and Parallel Resonance Circuit
Communication Lab Assignment: Series and Parallel Resonance Circuit
Communication Department
The series RLC circuit above has a single loop with the instantaneous
current flowing through the loop being the same for each circuit element.
Since the inductive and capacitive reactance’s XL and XC are a function of
the supply frequency, the sinusoidal response of a series RLC circuit will
therefore vary with frequency, ƒ. Then the individual voltage drops across
each circuit element of R, L and C element will be “out-of-phase” with
each other as defined by:
i(t) = Imax sin(ωt)
The instantaneous voltage across a pure resistor, VR is “in-phase”
with current
The instantaneous voltage across a pure inductor, VL “leads” the
current by 90o
The instantaneous voltage across a pure capacitor, VC “lags” the
current by 90o
Therefore, VL and VC are 180o “out-of-phase” and in opposition to
each other.
For the series RLC circuit above, this can be shown as:
The amplitude of the source voltage across all three components in a series
RLC circuit is made up of the three individual component
voltages, VR, VL and VC with the current common to all three components. The
vector diagrams will therefore have the current vector as their reference
with the three voltage vectors being plotted with respect to this reference as
shown below.
Please note that when using the above equation, the final reactive voltage
must always be positive in value, that is the smallest voltage must always be
taken away from the largest voltage we can not have a negative voltage
added to VR so it is correct to have VL – VC or VC – VL. The smallest value from
the largest otherwise the calculation of VS will be incorrect.
We know from above that the current has the same amplitude and phase in
all the components of a series RLC circuit. Then the voltage across each
component can also be described mathematically according to the current
flowing through, and the voltage across each element as.
By substituting these values into the Pythagoras equation above for the
voltage triangle will give us:
So we can see that the amplitude of the source voltage is proportional to the
amplitude of the current flowing through the circuit. This proportionality
constant is called the Impedance of the circuit which ultimately depends
upon the resistance and the inductive and capacitive reactance’s.
Then in the series RLC circuit above, it can be seen that the opposition to
current flow is made up of three components, XL, XC and R with the
reactance, XT of any series RLC circuit being defined as: XT = XL –
XC or XT = XC – XL whichever is greater. Thus the total impedance of the
circuit being thought of as the voltage source required to drive a current
through it.
In the above parallel RLC circuit, we can see that the supply voltage, V S is
common to all three components whilst the supply current I S consists of three
parts. The current flowing through the resistor, IR, the current flowing through
the inductor, IL and the current through the capacitor, I C.
But the current flowing through each branch and therefore each component
will be different to each other and also to the supply current, I S. The total
current drawn from the supply will not be the mathematical sum of the three
individual branch currents but their vector sum.
Like the series RLC circuit, we can solve this circuit using the phasor or vector
method but this time the vector diagram will have the voltage as its reference
with the three current vectors plotted with respect to the voltage. The phasor
diagram for a parallel RLC circuit is produced by combining together the three
individual phasors for each component and adding the currents vectorially.
Since the voltage across the circuit is common to all three circuit elements we
can use this as the reference vector with the three current vectors drawn
relative to this at their corresponding angles. The resulting vector current IS is
obtained by adding together two of the vectors, IL and IC and then adding this
sum to the remaining vector IR. The resulting angle obtained
between V and IS will be the circuits phase angle as shown below.
We can see from the phasor diagram on the right hand side above that the
current vectors produce a rectangular triangle, comprising of hypotenuse IS,
horizontal axis IR and vertical axis IL – IC Hopefully you will notice then, that this
forms a Current Triangle. We can therefore use Pythagoras’s theorem on this
current triangle to mathematically obtain the individual magnitudes of the
branch currents along the x-axis and y-axis which will determine the total
supply current IS of these components as shown.
The mathematical equations for Parallel RLC Circuit are as
below:
Since the voltage across the circuit is common to all three circuit elements, the
current through each branch can be found using Kirchhoff’s Current Law, (KCL).
Remember that Kirchhoff’s current law or junction law states that “the total
current entering a junction or node is exactly equal to the current leaving that
node”. Thus the currents entering and leaving node “A” above are given as:
Taking the derivative, dividing through the above equation by C and then re-
arranging gives us the following Second-order equation for the circuit current.
It becomes a second-order equation because there are two reactive elements
in the circuit, the inductor and the capacitor.