THE STUDY OF DC TRANSIENTS IN RC CIRCUIT

Nur Muhammad Alif Bin Ramli

Mohd Ezzat Danial Bin Saiful Bahri
Ahmad Faiz Bin Zawawi
University Kuala Lumpur British Malaysian Institute
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Abstract:
The main reason of constructing this laboratory experiment is to analyse the behaviours of
DC transient in RC series circuit like the current changes across capacitor, the resistor
voltages and capacitor voltages.
A simple circuit consist of 12V DC power supply, 43k resistor and 470F capacitor is
constructed. The voltage drops across capacitor are measured every specific time for the
behaviour such as voltages across resistor and currents across capacitor to be calculated. Then
by using the data, VR and iC ara calculated for each charging and discharging capacitor and
then analytical graphs are plotted.

Introduction:
Reactive components either capacitive or inductive connected to any electronic circuit or
system will affect the resultant time constant. Tau () is the unit measurement of the time
response.
When an increasing DC voltage is applied to a discharged Capacitor, the capacitor draws a
charging current and charges up, and when the voltage is reduced, the capacitor discharges
in the opposite direction. Because capacitors are able to store electrical energy they act like
small batteries and can store or release the energy as required.
The charge on the plates of the capacitor is given as: Q = CV. This charging (storage) and
discharging (release) of a capacitors energy is never instant but takes a certain amount of time
to occur with the time taken for the capacitor to charge or discharge to within a certain
percentage of its maximum supply value being known as its Time Constant ( ).
If a resistor is connected in series with the capacitor forming an RC circuit, the capacitor will
charge up gradually through the resistor until the voltage across the capacitor reaches that of
the supply voltage. The time called the transient response, required for this to occur is
equivalent to about 5 time constants or 5T.
This transient response time T, is measured in terms of = R x C, in seconds, where R is the
value of the resistor in ohms and C is the value of the capacitor in Farads. This then forms the
basis of an RC charging circuit were 5T can also be thought of as 5 x RC.

Experimental Set-Up:

Figure 1

Procedure:
A - Capacitor Charging and Discharging:
1. A circuit is constructed based on Figure 1 where the switch is connected to terminal 2.
2. Capacitor is initially made sure to be fully discharged.
3. As soon as the switch moved to terminal 1, the stopwatch is started until t = , 2, 3,
4 and 5 where =RC which is approximately 20 seconds.
4. At each respective time, the voltage drops of capacitor are measured using digital
multimeter.
5. Immediately after stopwatch stopped, the stopwatch is instantly resumed to start
measuring time for discharging for t = , 2, 3, 4 and 5.
6. Steps 1 to 4 are repeated 3 times and average voltage drops of capacitor at respective
time are calculated.
7. By using this data, VR and iC are calculated.
B Graph Plotting:
1. By using the data from part A, two graphs of VC vs time and VR vs time for capacitor
charging are plotted.
2. Next, another two graphs of VC vs time and VR vs time for capacitor discharging are
plotted.