On Resonance and Frequency Response Characteristics of Electrical Circuits

Abstract

While teaching network analysis to undergraduate students, the frequency response of electrical circuits consisting of passive elements such as resistors, capacitors and inductors are commonly analysed. Students are familiar with the sharp amplitude peak or trough normally occurring at resonance. This observation is not only intuitively pleasing, but also consistent with the concept of resonance in many physical systems. In the well-known series and parallel RLC circuits, the maximum and minimum currents, respectively, occur at resonance. Because of this, many students and even instructors (sometimes) may erroneously assume that the resonance in general RLC circuits implies maximum or minimum current. In this paper, it will be shown that this is generally untrue. The theoretical analyses and experimental validation of series, parallel and series-parallel RLC circuits are presented to address this common misconception.

Keywords

engineering education frequency response resonance RLC circuits

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Gluskin

and Shmilovitz

, ‘The ‘a + b’ argument for teaching resonance’, Int. J. Elect Enging Educ., 48 (2011), 111–114.

Alexander

and Sadiku

, Fundamentals of Electric Circuits (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2009).

Dorf

R. C.

and Svoboda

J. A.

, Introduction to Electric Circuits (John Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2010).

Floyd

T. L.

, Electric Circuits Fundamentals (Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2009).

DeCarlo

R. A.

and Lin

P.-M.

, Linear Circuit Analysis: Time Domain, Phasor and Laplace Transform Approaches, (Oxford University Press, New York, 2001).