Capacitance in Series

Capacitors in Parallel
Capacitors in Series -MORE DISCUSSION

 Suppose you have two or more capacitors connected in series, as in the picture above. To find
their total capacitance, use the reciprocal formula:

 CT = 1 ÷ (1÷C1 + 1÷C2 +  ... + 1÷Cn)

 This equation has the same form as the equation you've learned for finding the total resistance
of resistors connected in parallel. So we see that capacitors in series combine like resistors in
parallel.

Shortcut Rules for Capacitors in Series

  In Unit 8 you learned two shortcut rules that you can use for special cases of parallel resistors.

 The first shortcut rule said that if you have just two resistors in parallel, you can find their total
resistance using the product-over-sum rule: RT  = (R1  × R2) ÷ (R1  + R2). Similarly, if you have just
two capacitors in series, you can find their total capacitance using the use the product-over-
sum rule:

CT  = (C1  × C2) ÷ (C1  + C2)

 The second shortcut rule applied to several parallel resistors that all have the resistance. This
rule said that if you have n parallel resistors, each with resistance R, the total resistance is given
by RT  = R ÷ n. Similarly, if you have n series capacitors, each with capacitance C, the total
capacitance is given by:

CT  = C ÷ n

 Of course, the reciprocal formula given earlier applies to all cases of capacitors in series, so it
will give the same answer that the shortcut rules give for these special cases.

Charge on Capacitors in Series

 Now let's think about connecting series capacitors to a voltage source, as in the picture below:

 Series-connected capacitors have the same charge as each other, regardless of their individual
capacitance values.

 So in a series circuit, all of the capacitors will have the same charge. In symbols, Q1 = Q2 = Q3 = ...

 We call this charge QT, which stands for total charge.  It's given by:

QT = CT × VT

where VT is the source voltage.

 Note: this equation is basically a rearranged version of the equation that we saw earlier:

C = Q ÷ V

The only difference is that and we've added "T" subscripts to show that we're talking
about total capacitance, total charge, and total voltage.

Voltage on Capacitors in Series

  Once you know the charge on each capacitor in a series circuit, find the voltage drops by using
the equation:

V=Q÷C

for each capacitor. In other words,

V1 = Q1 ÷ C1

V2 = Q2 ÷ C2

and so on.

 Again, this is just a rearranged version of our basic formula. Right?

Capacitors in Parallel

 Suppose you have two or more capacitors connected in parallel, as in the picture above. To find
their total capacitance, simply add the individual capacitances:

CT = C1 + C2 +  ... + Cn

 So we see that capacitors in parallel combine like resistors in series.

Charge and Voltage on Capacitors in Parallel

 Now let's think about connecting parallel capacitors to a voltage source, as in the picture below:

 Parallel-connected capacitors have the same voltage.

 So in a parallel circuit, all of the capacitors will have the same voltage. In
symbols, V1 = V2 = V3 = ... = VT, where VT is the source voltage.

 To find the charge on each capacitor in a parallel circuit , use

Q=V×C

for each capacitor. In other words,

Q1 = V1 × C1

Q2 = V2 × C2

and so on.

Once again, this is not a new equation, just a rearranged version of our basic equation for capacitors.

 For capacitors in parallel, the total charge delivered by the source equals the sum of the charges
on the individual capacitors.

Series-Parallel Capacitors

 For series-parallel capacitor circuits, the strategy is very similar to the strategy that you've
learned for series-parallel resistor circuits:

1. Combine series capacitors and parallel capacitors to obtain progressively simpler

equivalent circuits, until you've combined all of the capacitors into a single total
capacitance, CT.

2. Then work backwards, using our basic formula C  =  Q  ÷  V  (along with rearranged
versions of that formula) and remembering that series-connected capacitors have the
same charge and parallel-connected capacitors have the same voltage.

Don't Connect Capacitors Directly Across a Voltage Source


Above we've been looking at circuits such as the one pictured above, in which a capacitor (or
combination of capacitors) is connected directly across a voltage source. In fact, though, you
should not connect a capacitor (or combination of capacitors) directly across a voltage source,
since the resulting surge of current could damage the capacitor or the voltage source. So the
 circuits that we've looked at so far are ones that you should not build on a breadboard.

 Instead, you should always have a resistance in series with the capacitor(s), to limit the amount
of current that flows.

 If you should never build circuits like these, then why did we bother looking at them? Because
the rules that you learned there do apply to capacitors in more complicated circuits. For
example, it's true in any circuit that:

o Total capacitance of series capacitors is given by the reciprocal formula.

o Total capacitance of parallel capacitors is equal to the sum of the capacitances.

o Series capacitors have the same charge.

o Parallel capacitors have the same voltage.

o If you know a capacitor's capacitance and its voltage, then you can find its charge using
the equation Q = C × V.

So even though the circuits that you studied above are not circuits that you should actually build, the
techniques you learned by studying these circuits do apply to more realistic circuits.

Series RC Network

 A resistor and capacitor connected in series are called a series RC network.

 Series RC networks have many practical uses. They are often used in timing circuits to control
events that must happen repeatedly at a fixed time interval.

o One example is a circuit that causes an LED to blink on and off once every second. There
are several ways to design a circuit to do this, but one of the most common ways uses a
series RC circuit. By adjusting the value of the resistor or the capacitor, the designer can
cause the LED to blink faster or slower.

DC RC Circuit

 An RC circuit is any circuit containing, in addition to a power supply, just resistors and
capacitors.
  In this course we'll restrict our attention to RC circuits containing DC voltage sources. We'll refer
to such circuits as DC RC circuits.

 Examples: A very simple DC RC circuit just has a resistor, a capacitor, and a voltage source in

series: 

 Here's a more complicated DC RC circuit, with several resistors and capacitors:

Behavior of Capacitors in DC Circuits

 The currents and voltages in a DC RC circuit depend on whether the capacitors are fully
discharged, partially charged, or fully charged.

 Here's an important rule of thumb that you must memorize:

A fully discharged capacitor is equivalent to a short circuit. 

 So to find currents and voltages in a DC RC circuit whose capacitors are fully discharged, replace
all capacitors with short circuits (in other words, with wires). Then you'll be left with a circuit
containing just a power supply and resistors, which you can analyze using the skills you learned
earlier in this course.

 Here's another important rule of thumb:

A fully charged capacitor is equivalent to an open circuit.

 So to find currents and voltages in a DC RC circuit whose capacitors are fully charged, replace all
capacitors with open circuits. Then you'll be left with a circuit containing just a power supply and
resistors, which you can analyze using the skills you learned earlier in this course.

Initial, Transient, Steady-State

  In most practical DC RC circuits, the values of current and voltage change with time as capacitors
are charged or discharged. Typically such circuits contain a switch that is initially open, and
you're interested in finding the values of voltage and current after the switch has been closed.

 To remind ourselves of this fact, we often include an open switch in schematic drawings of
DC RC circuits, as in the following picture:

 We distinguish three time periods in the analysis of such DC RC circuits:

1. the initial period, when the switch is first closed.

2. the transient period, while the capacitors are being charged or discharged.

3. the steady-state period, after the capacitors have been fully charged or fully discharged.

 As we'll see now, we use different rules to figure out voltages and currents during these three
different time periods.

Initial Currents and Voltages

 The currents and voltages in a circuit at the instant when a switch is first closed are called
the initial currents and initial voltages.

 In most cases, at this initial instant the circuit's capacitors are either fully discharged or fully
charged. Therefore, using the rules of thumb you learned above, you'll find the circuit's initial
values of voltage and current by replacing the capacitors either with shorts (if the capacitors are
fully discharged) or with opens (if the capacitors are fully charged).

Steady-State Currents & Voltages

 When the switch in a DC RC circuit has been closed for a long time, currents and voltages have
reached their steady-state values.

 In most cases, in the steady state the circuit's capacitors are either fully discharged or fully
charged. Therefore, using the rules of thumb you learned above, you'll find the circuit's steady-
state values of voltage and current by replacing the capacitors either with shorts (if the
capacitors have been fully discharged) or by opens (if the capacitors have been fully charged.)

Transient

 We've just seen how to figure out the initial currents and voltages in a DC RC circuit and
the steady-state currents and voltages in a DC RC circuit. That covers the first instant when the
switch is first closed, and it also covers times a long time later, after the capacitors have been
 fully charged or fully discharged. But what about the in-between times, after the switch has
been closed but before the capacitors are fully charged or discharged?

 While a capacitor is being charged (or discharged), currents and voltages change gradually from
their initial values to their steady-state values. We call this the transient period of a
DC RC circuit.

 Transient means temporary, or short-lived. In DC circuits, a transient is a voltage or current that

changes for a short time.

 As we saw above, it's not too difficult to figure out initial and steady-state currents and

voltages. You just have to replace all capacitors with either shorts or opens. But it takes more
work to figure out transient voltages and currents. Below we'll write down equations that let us
calculate the values of these currents and voltages during the time while they're changing from
their initial values to their steady-state values.

v and i

 First, let's review some notational conventions. You've seen in earlier units that we
use uppercase italic letters, such as V and I, for quantities whose values are constant.

o These constant values might be steady, unchanging values in a DC circuit.

o Or they might be constant values in an AC circuit, such as peak values or peak-to-peak

values. (Remember, the instantaneous voltages and currents in an AC circuit change
with time, but the peak and peak-to-peak values don't change as time passes.)

 On the other hand, we use lowercase italic letters, such as v and i, to designate quantities

whose values change with time.

o These changing values might be instantaneous values in an AC circuit.

o Or they might be changing, transient values in a DC circuit.

 So in the material below, we'll be using lowercase letters because we'll be talking about
transient values in a DC circuit. The important thing to realize is that we use uppercase letters
for constant quantities (whether the circuit is DC or AC), and we use lowercase letters
for changing quantities (whether the circuit is DC or AC).

 Here's another convention that we'll use occasionally. To talk about the value of a changing
quantity at a particular time, we write that time in parentheses.

o Examples: i(0) means the value of a current at 0 seconds, and v(0.8) means the value of
a voltage at 0.8 seconds.
Transients While Charging

 In the circuit shown below, assume that the capacitor starts out being fully discharged. If we close
the switch, the capacitor will gradually charge.

 We wish to be able to calculate i, vR, and vC. By this I mean that we wish to be able to calculate
the circuit's current, the resistor's voltage, and the capacitor's voltage at any particular time
while the capacitor is charging.

Calculating i

 In the series DC RC circuit shown, after the switch is closed at time t = 0, the current is given by
the equation:

i = (VS  ÷ R) e−t ÷ RC

where e is a constant equal to approximately 2.7183.

 You don't need to remember the value of e, because scientific calculators have a special button
to give you this value.

Exponential Decay

 The current given by the equation above is a maximum at t = 0 and then gradually decays
(decreases) until it reaches zero when the capacitor is fully charged.
  Here is a graph of the equation for particular values of VS, R, and C. The graph shows current on
the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis.

 For now, don't worry about the numbers on the axes. Just look at the shape of the curve. The
numbers will be different if you change the values of VS, R, or C, but the curve will always have
this shape.

 Notice that the current decreases as time passes, but it does not decrease in a straight line.
Instead, the current decreases very quickly at first, and then decreases more slowly.

 In mathematics, a curve with this shape is called an exponential curve. So, since the current is
decreasing (or decaying) along a curve of this shape, we call this exponential decay.

Time Constant

 We've been considering the equation

i = (VS  ÷ R) e−t ÷ RC

The quantity RC in this equation is called the time constant of the series RC network.  It is represented
by the Greek letter τ, and its units are seconds:

τ = R×C

 In terms of τ, we can rewrite our equation for the current as

i = (VS  ÷ R) e−t ÷  τ

 In this equation, be careful not to confuse t with τ. The variable t represents time; its value is the
time at which you want to know the current. The time constant τ is fixed and depends on the
size of your circuit's resistor and capacitor.

 By the way, the name of Greek letter τ is "tau," which rhymes with "cow."
  The time constant τ is an indicator of how long the capacitor takes to charge.  The larger τ is, the
longer the charge time.

How Long to Charge?

 Here is a useful rule of thumb:

For most practical purposes, we may assume that all quantities in a DC RC circuit have reached their
steady-state values after five time constants.

 So, for example, if we're charging a capacitor in a DC RC circuit, and if that circuit has a time
constant of 1 second, then it will take about 5 seconds to charge up the capacitor.

 Since one time constant is equal to R×C, we can write this rule of thumb as an equation:

Time to reach steady state ≈ 5×R×C

 Notice that in this equation I used a "squiggly equals sign" ≈ to indicate that this is an
approximation. Actually, after five time constants the capacitor will be about 99.3% charged, not
completely charged. For most practical purposes, that's close enough.

Calculating vR and vC

 Let's continue our analysis of a simple series DC RC circuit, in which we're assuming that the
capacitor starts out being fully discharged.

 We've seen that the current in this circuit as the capacitor charges is given by the equation:

i = (VS  ÷ R) e−t ÷  τ

 In the same circuit, after the switch is closed at time t = 0, the resistor's voltage drop is given by
the equation:

vR  = VS  e−t ÷  τ

and the capacitor's voltage drop is given by the equation:

vC  = VS(1 - e−t ÷  τ)

 Don't think of these as three separate equations that you have to remember. Once you've got
the equation for i, you can easily use Ohm's Law to derive the expression for vR.
 o Remember, Ohm's Law says that a resistor's voltage is equal to its current times its
resistance. Do you see that if you take the expression above for i and multiply it by R,
you'll get the expression above for vR?

 And once you've got the equation for vR, you can easily use Kirchhoff's Voltage Law (KVL) to
derive the expression for vC.

o Remember, KVL says that the sum of the voltage drops around a loop must equal the
sum of the voltage rises around that loop. Applying KVL to our simple series
DC RC circuit gives us VS = vR + vC. Do you see how this lets you derive the expression
above for vC from the expression above for vR?

More Exponential Curves

 If you plot these equations for the resistor voltage and the capacitor voltage, you will get
exponential curves similar to the curve we saw above for current.

 In particular, a graph of the resistor's voltage has the same shape as the graph of current, and
so this is another case of exponential decay. Here is the graph:

 On the other hand, the capacitor voltage starts at 0 V and gradually increases until it reaches a
maximum when the capacitor is fully charged. The graph is shown below. Notice that this curve
has basically the same shape as the earlier curves, but flipped upside down. We see again that
 the values change very quickly at first, and then gradually approach a final value.

Discharging a Capacitor

 Up to now we've been talking about charging a capacitor. Similar comments, but in reverse,
apply to the case of discharging a capacitor.

General Exponential Equations

 So far, we've been discussing the transient values of i, vR, and vC during the time while a
capacitor is being charged up from 0 V. But what if the capacitor is initially partly charged, so
that its initial voltage is not 0 V? Or what if we've got a charged capacitor that we're discharging,
rather than a discharged capacitor that we're charging?

 Wouldn't it be nice to have general equations that we can use in all of these cases? The
equations that we wrote above for i, vR, and vC would then be special cases of the general
equations.

 We can indeed write down general equations to cover all of these cases. For voltage, the general
equation is

v = VF  + (Vi  − VF) e−t ÷  τ

where Vi is the initial voltage and and VF is the final voltage.

 Make sure that you see how this general equation gives you the equations we got above
for vR and vC when you plug in the appropriate values for Vi and VF.

o Hint: In the special case that we discussed above, the capacitor is initially discharged,
which means it initially behaves like a short. But in the end the capacitor is fully charged,
which means that its final behavior is like an open. Therefore you should be able to see
 that the capacitor's initial voltage is 0 V and its final voltage is VS. Using this knowledge,
you should be able to use the general equation to derive our earlier equation for vC.

o Similarly, you should be able to see that the resistor's initial voltage is VS and its final
voltage is 0 V. Using this knowledge, you should be able to use the general equation to
derive our earlier equation for vR.

 Simply replacing v with i and  V with I, we can write down a similar general equation for current:

i = IF  + (Ii  − IF) e−t ÷  τ

where Ii is the initial current and and IF is the final current.

 Make sure that you see how this general equation gives you the equation we got above
for i when you plug in the appropriate values for Ii and IF.

Series-Parallel Transients

 When a capacitor charges (or discharges) through a series-parallel resistor network, the
equations given above for the capacitor's transient current and voltage still work, as long as you
first replace the series-parallel network with its Thevenin equivalent.

 For example, in the series-parallel circuit shown below, which you will analyze in the Self-Test
questions, we have a capacitor connected to a network of three resistors and a voltage source.
Thevenin's theorem lets you "collapse" those three resistors and the voltage source down to a
single resistor and voltage source connected in series with the capacitor. You can then use the
equations you've learned in this unit to analyze that "collapsed" circuit, and the results you get
from this analysis will be correct for the original circuit as well.
 DC
CIRCUITS

o CAPACITORS

 SERIES CIRUITS
 PARALLEL
CIRCUITS
SUBMITTED BY: ANN JANNISE RAS
SUBMITTED TO: SIR MHER CADIZ