Phasor Method of Solving Circuits

1 Complex Algebra
When you solve for a phasor quantity in a circuit, you will have to maninipulate complex exponentials to get your answer in a form from which you can extract the magnitude and phase of the phasor. A phasor is nothing more than a complex number which we call a phasor because of the special application we are using it for, namely, to nd the steady-state value of some voltage or current in a circuit driven by a sinusoidal forcing function.

1.1

Rectangular Form

Since a phasor is just a complex number, it has a real part and an imaginary part and can be represented in rectangular form as: z = a + jb where a = Re z and b = Im z . (1)

1.2

Polar Form

Alternatively, any complex number can be represented in the so-called polar form as (2) z = |z |ej = rej = r where r is the magnitude and is the phase of the complex number. This is important: since a phasor is a complex number, it can be put in polar form and its magnitude and phase can be found. Note the strange notation using the angle symbol. This is just something that engineers use instead of writing out ej , and you should not let it confuse you. Now we must know the relationship between the rectangular and polar forms of a complex number (or phasor): r= (Re z )2 + (Im z )2 = Im z Re z 1 a2 + b 2 b a (3) (4)

= arctan

= arctan

Moreover, Eulers equation tells us that rej = r cos + jr sin . This gives the reverse relationship between polar and rectangular forms as a = r cos b = r sin (5) (6)

The reason these equations work is because a complex number can be represented in two-dimensional space as a vector (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Visual representation of a complex number. Note that in the gure i is used as 1 instead of j . Now the equations given above make perfect sense because they just come from an application of trigonometry to the triangle shown above. Thus there is a one-to-one correspondence between complex numbers and 2-dimensional vectors of the form A = ax + by . In mathematics this is called an isomorphism.

1.3

Ratio of Complex Numbers

a1 + jb1 r1 ej1 z1 = = = rej z2 a2 + jb2 r2 ej2

Often, when solving for phasor quantities, you will get an answer in the form z= (7)

So from this equation how do we get r and from the ratio of two complex numbers? Well, due to the properties of the exponential function we have 2

that

r1 ej1 = r2 ej2 r= r1 = r2

r1 r2

ej (1 2 )
2 a2 1 + b1 2 a2 2 + b2

(8)

Therefore, (9)

b1 b2 arctan (10) a1 a2 So as long as you put your answer in the form of one complex number divided by another, you can use the above equations to quickly extract the magnitude and phase from your phasor. Next we shall apply this to nd the magnitude and phase of RC, RL, and RLC circuits. = 1 2 = arctan

Application to Circuits

Once the phasor quantity has been found and the above equations used to extract the phase and magnitude, one must simply invoke the inverse phasor transform to get the steady-state time domain response of the desired quantity. v (t) = r cos (t + ) (11) An aside: recall from your lab 8 instructions that in the experimental section it said to use the equation = 360f t to nd the phase dierence between the two sinusoidal waves on the oscilloscope. Do not try to use this equation to nd the phase of your circuits for the pre-lab. This equation only works because you have access to the time data of your waves. In other words, what you see on the oscilloscope is the wave given by (11). The equation for given in your lab instructions is derived by observing that has the same 2f = 360f we get that = 360f t. units as t. Since = 2f = 360 2 Anyway, by applying voltage division and using the complex algebra detailed above we can extract the phasor magnitude and phase from RC, RL, and RLC circuits. Note that I am assuming the reference phase of the driving voltage to be zero. Two more equations we need before proceeding are the impedances of a capacitor and inductor, which are Zc = 1 j = jC C 3 (12)

ZL = jL We are nally ready to derive the phasor quantities of each circuit.

(13)

2.1

RC Circuits
Vc = |Vc | = V 1 + jRC V 1 + (RC )2 (14) (15) (16)

c = arctan (RC )

2.2

RL Circuits
VL = |VL | = jV L R + jL V L R2 + (L)2 L R (17) (18) (19)

L = 90 arctan

2.3

RLC Circuits
VR = |VR | = VR 1 + jL R + jC VR R2 + L R = arctan L R
1 2 C 1 C

(20) (21)

(22)