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Discharging A Capacitor

The document discusses how the voltage across a capacitor decreases over time when the capacitor is discharged through a resistor in a circuit. It provides the differential equation that describes the discharging process and shows that both the voltage and current decrease exponentially with a time constant equal to RC, where R is the resistance and C is the capacitance.

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Mihai Gînța
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37 views2 pages

Discharging A Capacitor

The document discusses how the voltage across a capacitor decreases over time when the capacitor is discharged through a resistor in a circuit. It provides the differential equation that describes the discharging process and shows that both the voltage and current decrease exponentially with a time constant equal to RC, where R is the resistance and C is the capacitance.

Uploaded by

Mihai Gînța
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discharging a Capacitor Consider the circuit shown below.

Suppose the capacitor has been charged to some value Q. For t < 0 the switch S is open and the potential difference across the capacitor is given by UC = Q/C On the other hand, the potential difference across the resistor is zero because there is no corrent flow, i = 0. Now, suppose at t = 0 the switch S is closed. The capcitor will be discharge.

The charged capacitor is now acting like a voltage source to drive current around the circuit. When the capacitor discharges the voltage across the capacitor decreases. Applying the Kirchhoffs voltage law by traversing the loop in clockwise, the equation that describes the discharging process is given by UC(t) Ri(t) = 0, UC(t) = q(t)/C The current that flow away from the positive plate is proportional to the charge on the plate: i(t) = - dq/dt The negative sign in the equation above is an indication that the rate of the change of the charge is proportional to the negative of the charge on the capacitor. This is due to the fact that the charge on the positive plate is decreasing as more positive charge leave the positive plate. Thus, the charge satisfies a first order differential equation: q(t)/C + Rdq/dt = 0 The solution of this equation is q(t) = Qe-t/RC The voltage across the capacitor is then,

UC(t) = q(t)/C = (Q/C)e-t/RC = U0e-t/RC Te quantity = RC is the time constant of the discharging process. After a time interval t = = RC, the potential difference across the capacitor decrease by a factor e-1 = 0.368 of its initial value: U(t = ) = (Q/C)e-1 = 0.368U0

Graph of voltage across the capacitor vs. time, for the discharging process in shown in Figure 2.
UC U0=Q/C

U0/e t

Figure 2. Voltage across the capacitor as function of time for discharging capacitor

The current also exponentially decays in the circuit, as can be seen by differentiating the charge on the capacitor: i(t) = - dq/dt = [Q/(RC)]e-t/RC = I0e-t/RC The graph of the current flowing in the circuit as function of time (Figure 3) also has the same form as the voltage graph presented above:
i I0=Q/(RC)

I0/e t

Figure 3. Current as function of time for discharging capacitor

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