Electrical Circuit Analysis II

Chapter 4

Sinusoidal Alternating
Waveforms
 Introduction

 Alternating
currents and voltages vary with
time and periodically change their direction
 AC Fundamentals
 Previously you learned that DC sources have fixed polarities and
constant magnitudes and thus produce currents with constant value
and unchanging direction

 In contrast, the voltages of ac sources alternate in polarity and vary in

magnitude and thus produce currents that vary in magnitude and
alternate in direction.
 Sine Waves

 Sine waves
◦ by far the most important form of alternating
quantity
important properties are shown below
 AC Fundamentals
 Sinusoidal ac
Voltage
One complete variation is referred to as a cycle.
Starting at zero,
the voltage increases to a positive peak
amplitude, decreases to zero,
changes polarity,
increases to a negative peak amplitude,
then returns again to zero.

 Since the waveform repeats itself at regular intervals, it is called a

periodic signal.
 Symbol for an ac Voltage Source

Lowercase letter e is used

to indicate that the voltage varies with time.
 Generating ac Voltages (Method A)
 One way to generate an ac voltage is to rotate a coil of wire at
constant angular velocity in a fixed magnetic field

 The magnitude of the resulting voltage is proportional to the rate at

which flux lines are cut

 its polarity is dependent on the direction the coil sides move through the
field.
 Generating ac Voltages
 Since the coil rotates continuously, the voltage produced will be a
repetitive,

Time Scales  Often we need to scale the output voltage in time.

 The length of time required to generate one cycle depends
on the velocity of rotation.
600 revolutions in 1 minute = 600 rev / 60 s
= 10 revolutions in 1
second.
The time for 1 revolution = one-tenth of a
second
= 100 ms
 Generating ac Voltages (Method B)
 AC waveforms may also be created electronically using function (or
signal) generators.
 With function generators, you are not limited to sinusoidal ac. gear.

 The unit of Figure can produce a variety of variable-frequency waveforms,

including sinusoidal, square wave, triangular, and so on.
 Waveforms such as these are commonly used to test electronic

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 Voltage and Current Conventions for ac
 First, we assign reference polarities for the source and a reference
direction for the current.
 We then use the convention that, when e has a positive value, its actual polarity is
the same as the reference polarity, and when e has a negative value, its actual
polarity is opposite to that of the reference.
 For current, we use the convention that
when i has a positive value, its actual
direction is the same as the reference
arrow,
 and when i has a negative value, its
actual direction is opposite to that of the
reference.

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10
 Instantaneous Value
 As the coil voltage changes from instant to instant. The value of voltage
at any point on the waveform is referred to as its instantaneous value.

 The voltage has a peak value of 40  at t = 0 ms, the voltage is zero.

volts  at t=0.5 ms, the voltage is 20V.
 The cycle time of 6 ms.
Voltage and Current Conventions for ac
 Attributes of Periodic Waveforms
 Periodic waveforms (i.e., waveforms that repeat at regular intervals),
regardless of their wave shape, may be described by a group of attributes
such as:
 Frequency, Period, Amplitude, Peak value.
Frequency: The number of cycles per second of a waveform is defined

 Frequency is denoted by the lower-case letter f.

 In the SI system, its unit is the hertz (Hz, named in honor of pioneer researcher
Heinrich Hertz, 1857–1894).
 Attributes of Periodic Waveforms
 Period:  The period, T, of a waveform, is the duration of one cycle.

 It is the inverse of frequency.

 The period of a waveform can be measured between any two

corresponding points ( Often it is measured between zero points because
they are easy to establish on an oscilloscope trace).
 Attributes of Periodic Waveforms
Amplitude , Peak-Value, and Peak-to-Peak Value
Amplitude (Em):
The amplitude of a sine wave is the
distance from its average to its peak.

Peak-to-Peak Value (Ep-p):

It is measured between minimum and maximum
peaks.
Peak Value

The peak value of a voltage or current is its

maximum value with respect to zero.
 The Basic Sine Wave Equation

The voltage produced by the previously described generator is:

• Em: the maximum coil voltage and

• α : the instantaneous angular position of the
coil.

 For a given generator and rotational velocity, Em is constant.)

 Note that a 0° represents the horizontal position of the coil and that one
complete cycle corresponds to 360°.
 Angular Velocity (ω)

The rate at which the generator coil rotates is called its angular velocity
If the coil rotates through an angle of 30° in one
second, its angular velocity is 30° per second.

 When you know the angular velocity of a coil and the length of time that
it has rotated, you can compute the angle through which it has turned
using:
 Radian Measure

 In practice, q is usually expressed in radians per second,

 Radians and degrees are related by :

For Conversion:
 Relationship between ω, T, and f

 Earlier you learned that one cycle of sine wave may be represented as
either:

 Substituting these into:

Sinusoidal Voltages and Currents as Functions of Time:

 We could replace the angle α as:

Example – see Example 11.2 in the course text
Determine the equation of the following voltage signal.
From diagram:
 Period is 50 ms = 0.05 s
 Thus f = 1/T =1/0.05 = 20 Hz
 Peak voltage is 10 V
 Therefore
v  V p sin 2  ft

 10 sin 2  20 t

 10 sin 126 t
 Introduction to Phasors
 A phasor is a rotating line whose projection on a vertical axis can
be used to represent sinusoidally varying quantities.
 To get at the idea, consider the red line of length Vm shown in Figure :

The vertical projection of this line (indicated in dotted red) is :

v=
 By assuming that the phasor rotates at angular velocity of ω rad/s in the
counterclockwise direction
Introduction to Phasors
 Phase angles
◦ the expressions given above assume the
angle of the sine wave is zero at t = 0
◦ if this is not the case the expression is
modified by adding the angle at t = 0
PHASE RELATIONS
 Voltages and Currents with Phase Shifts

 If a sine wave does not pass through zero at t =0 s, it has a phase

shift.
 Waveforms may be shifted to the left or to the right
 Phase difference
◦ two waveforms of the same frequency
may have a constant phase difference
we say that one is phase-shifted with respect to
the other
 Phasor Difference
 Phase difference refers to the angular displacement between different
waveforms of the same frequency.

 The terms lead and lag can be understood in terms of phasors. If you
observe phasors rotating as in Figure, the one that you see passing first
is leading and the other is lagging.

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Introduction to Phasors
 AC Waveforms and Average Value
 Since ac quantities constantly change its value, we need one single
numerical value that truly represents a waveform over its complete cycle.

Average Values:  To find the average of a set of marks for example, you
add them, then divide by the number of items summed.
 For waveforms, the process is conceptually the same.
You can sum the instantaneous values over a full cycle,
then divide by the number of points used.
 The trouble with this approach is that waveforms do
not consist of discrete values.
Average in Terms of the Area Under a Curve:

Or use area

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AC Waveforms and Average Value
 Average value of a sine wave
◦ average value over one (or more) cycles is
clearly zero
◦ however, it is often useful to know the
average magnitude of the waveform
independent of its polarity 1

we can think of this as V av  0 V p sin  d θ

the average value over Vp 
half a cycle…    cos  0

… or as the average value 2V p
of the rectified signal 

 0 . 637  V p
 Average value of a sine wave
 Root Mean Square (rms) Voltage and Current

 The “effective” values of voltage and current over the whole cycle

 rms voltage is Vm “RMS value of an alternating current is that steady

V  state current (dc) which when flowing through the
2
given resistor for a given amount of time produces
 rms current is the same amount of heat as produced by the
Im alternative current when flowing through the
I  same resistance for the same time”
Meters normally
2 indicate rms quantities and this value is
equal to the DC value

Other representations of Voltage or Current are

maximum or peak value
average value

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37
 r.m.s. value of a sine wave
◦ the instantaneous power (p) in a resistor is given by

2
v
p 
◦ therefore the average
R power is given by

2 2
[ average (or mean) of v ] v
P
av
 
R R

◦ where is the mean-square voltage

2
v
 While the mean-square voltage is useful,
more often we use the square root of this
quantity, namely the root-mean-square
voltage Vrms
◦ where Vrms =
◦ we can also define
v
2 Irms =
◦ it is relatively easy to showi 2 that (see text

for analysis)

1 1
V rms  V  0 . 707  V p I rms   I  0 . 707  I p
2 p 2 p
 r.m.s. valuesare useful because their
relationship to average power is
similar to the corresponding DC
values
P V I
av rms rms

2
V
rms
P 
av R

2
P  I R
av rms
 Form factor
◦ for any waveform the form factor is
defined as
r.m.s. value
Form factor 
average value

◦ for a sine wave this gives

0.707 V
p
Form factor   1 . 11
0.637 V
p
 Peak factor
◦ for any waveform the peak factor is
defined as
peak value
Peak factor 
r.m.s. value

◦ for a sine wave this gives

V
p
Peak factor   1 . 414
0.707 V
p