Resonant Circuits and Mutual Inductances

This handout considers the properties of resonant circuits and circuits containing mutual inductances. The material in this handout will be useful for the writeup of the Laboratories.

Resonant Circuits

A resonant circuit is simply an RLC circuit. Usually the eect of the resistance is small relative to the size of the inductance and capacitance. This leads to highly resonant behaviour. Usually resonant circuits are considered to by excited by a sinusoidal voltage or current source of frequency . In this handout, we will concentrate on a particular parallel RLC circuit. However, most of the ideas extend to any other conguration. More details concerning resonant circuits can be found in Chapter 17 of the text book. Consider the sinusoidal current driven parallel RLC circuit as shown in Figure 1.

+ Iin Z Vout R L C

Figure 1: Parallel RLC circuit. The applied current is assumed to be a sinusoidal current with frequency ; i.e., Iin (t) = Icos(t). As you saw last year, the best way to analyze the steady state behaviour of such a circuit is via the use of phasor/complex variable methods. In particular, we are interested in the total impedance of this circuit as a function of frequency: Z(j) = Vout (j) . Iin (j)

That is, the impedance is the transfer function from the current input to the voltage output. This can be calculated from the impedances of the individual components:

Resistor R Inductor jL 1 Capacitor jC 1

Hence, we obtain the total impedance: Z(j) =

1 R

1 + jC +

1 . jL

From this, we obtain the following expression for the magnitude of the impedance function |Z(j)| =
1 R

1
2

+ C

1 L

A typical plot of the impedance function of a resonant circuit is shown in Figure 2. |Z(j)|

R PSfrag replacements B
R 2

1 m

w0

Figure 2: Magnitude Frequency Response.

Resonant Frequency The resonant frequency m of a resonant circuit is the frequency corresponding to the peak value of the transfer function. From the above expression for |Z(j)|, we can see that the peak value for the impedance transfer function of this circuit

occurs when m C 1 m L 1 2 m = LC 1 m = LC =0

Bandwidth The bandwidth B of a resonant circuit is dened as follows: The frequencies 1 and 2 are dened as the frequencies at which the transfer function magnitude falls 1 to a factor of 2 time its peak value; see Figure 2. Then B = 2 1 . For the above circuit, we obtain 2 = 1 Hence we obtain B = 1 + 2RC 1 2RC 1 2RC 1 . RC
2

+
2

1 LC + 1 LC

1 = + 2RC

Q factor The Q of a resonant circuit is dened as Q= For the above circuit, we obtain Q = m RC = R C . L m . B

Mutual Inductance

We now look at some basic properties of transformers and coupled inductors. More details on this material can be found in Chapter 18 of the text book. When two inductors are in close proximity (or wound on the same core), they become magnetically coupled and exhibit mutual inductance. This can be indicated on a circuit diagram as shown in Figure 3. A transformer is an example of magnetically coupled inductors in which both inductors are wound on the same core to achieve tight magnetic coupling. 3

i1 + v1 L1 M L2

i2 + v2

Figure 3: Coupled Inductors.

The voltage and current relations for the coupled inductors shown in Figure 3 are as follows: di2 di1 v1 (t) = L1 +M dt dt di1 di2 v2 (t) = M + L2 dt dt The quantity M is the mutual inductance between the two inductors and is measured in Henrys. Note that the mutual inductance is the same in both directions. It follows from energy considerations that the mutual inductance M can be no bigger than L1 L2 . As an alternative to dening M for a pair of mutually coupled inductors, one can also dene the coecient of coupling k M . k= L1 L2 This is a dimensionless quantity in the range 0 k 1. However, the case of k = 1 corresponds to perfect coupling which is impossible to achieve in practice. Ideal Transformer An idea transformer is one for which the following relationship holds (referring to Figure 3) N1 v1 (t) = v2 (t) N2
N1 where N2 = a is a constant referred to as the turns ratio. An ideal transformer is not possible in practice but could be achieved by coupled inductors such that L1 , L2 , M and k = 1. A real transformer (ignoring energy dissipation eects) with self inductances L1 and L2 and mutual inductance M can be represented by an equivalent circuit involving an ideal transformer as shown in Figure 4.

(1-k2)L1

M:L2

k2L1

Ideal
Figure 4: Transformer equivalent circuit.