Tag: AC Inductor Circuits

The Skin Depth of Copper in Electrical Engineering As previously mentioned, the skin effect is where alternating current tends to avoid travel through the center of a solid conductor, limiting itself to conduction near the surface. This effectively limits the cross-sectional conductor area available to carry alternating electron flow, increasing the resistance of that conductor…

In an ideal case, an inductor acts as a purely reactive device. That is, its opposition to AC current is strictly based on inductive reaction to changes in current, and not electron friction as is the case with resistive components. However, inductors are not quite so pure in their reactive behavior. To begin with, they’re…

Let’s take the same components for our series example circuit and connect them in parallel: Parallel R-L circuit. Because the power source has the same frequency as the series example circuit, and the resistor and inductor both have the same values of resistance and inductance, respectively, they must also have the same values of impedance.…

In the previous section, we explored what would happen in simple resistor-only and inductor-only AC circuits. Now we will mix the two components together in series form and investigate the effects. Series Resistor Inductor Circuit Example Take this circuit as an example to work with: Series resistor inductor circuit: Current lags applied voltage by 0o…

Resistors vs. Inductors Inductors do not behave the same way as resistors do. Whereas resistors simply oppose the flow of current through them (by dropping a voltage directly proportional to the current), inductors oppose changes in current through them, by dropping a voltage directly proportional to the rate of change of current. In accordance with…

Pure resistive AC circuit: resistor voltage and current are in phase. If we were to plot the current and voltage for a very simple AC circuit consisting of a source and a resistor (figure above), it would look something like this: (figure below) Voltage and current “in phase” for resistive circuit. Because the resistor simply…