Electrical Engineering: Know It All

Chapter 8

Transients and Laplace Transforms

John Bird

8.1 Introduction

A transient state will exist in a circuit containing one or more energy storage elements (i.e., capacitors and inductors) whenever the energy conditions in the circuit change, until the new steady state condition is reached. Transients are caused by changing the applied voltage or current, or by changing any of the circuit elements; such changes occur due to opening and closing switches. In this chapter, such equations are developed analytically by using both differential equations and Laplace transforms for different waveform supply voltages.

8.2 Response of R-C Series Circuit to a Step Input

8.2.1 Charging a Capacitor

A series R-C circuit is shown in Figure 8.1(a).

Figure ...