Juhari

Electrical Departement
Technical Education Development Centre
Bandung
Let us now consider the C-R charging circuit in more detail. Such a circuit is
shown in Fig. 8.1 . Let us assume that the capacitor is initially fully discharged,
i.e. the p.d. between its plates ( vC ) is zero, as will be the charge, q.
Any quantity that varies in an exponential fashion will have a graph like
that shown in Fig. 8.2(a) if it increases with time, and as in Fig. 8.2(b) for a
decreasing function.
The capacitor will now charge via resistor R until the p.d. between its plates, vC E
volts. Once fully charged, the circuit current will be zero. The variations of capacitor
voltage and charge, p.d. across the resistance and charging current are shown in Figs.
8.4 to 8.7.
Consider the circuit of Fig. 8.11. At some time t 0, the switch is moved from
position ‘ A ’ to position ‘ B ’ . The connection to the supply is now
complete, and current will start to fl ow, increasing towards its final Fig. 8.11
steady value
However, whilst the current is changing it will induce a back-emf across the inductor,
of e volt. From electromagnetic induction theory we know that this induced emf will
have a value given by:
The graph of the decaying current, with respect to time, will therefore be as shown
in Fig. 8.17.