Department of Electrical Engineering

The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

Program: Bachelor of Electrical Engineering Semester: II

Subject: EE-121 (Linear Circuit Analysis) Date:

Lab No 14: CHARACTERISTICS OF RLC PARALLEL AC CIRCUIT 

Objectives:
 The objective of this experiment is to analyze and verify the Maximum power transfer
theorem.

Name: Muhammad Saad Roll No: BEE-FA19-010

Rubrics
Performance Lab Report

Description Total Obtained Description Total Obtained

Marks Marks Marks Marks
Experiment 10 Organization/ 05
Related Structure
knowledge
Data Analysis 10 Data 05
Presentation
Total Marks Total Marks
Obtained Obtained

Remarks(if any):- ____________________________

Signature:-__________________________________
 Department of Electrical Engineering
The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

THEORY:
An RLC circuit (or LCR circuit) is an electrical circuit consisting of a resistor, an inductor,
and a capacitor, connected in series or in parallel. The RLC part of the name is due to those
letters being the usual electrical symbols for resistance, inductance and capacitance
respectively. The circuit forms a harmonic oscillator for current and will resonate in just the
same way as an LC circuit will. The difference that the presence of the resistor makes is that
any oscillation induced in the circuit will die away over time if it is not kept going by a
source. This effect of the resistor is called damping. Some resistance is unavoidable in real
circuits, even if a resistor is not specifically included as a component. A pure LC circuit is an
ideal which really only exists in theory.
The properties of the parallel RLC circuit can be obtained from the duality relationship of
electrical circuits and considering that the parallel RLC is the dual impedance of a series
RLC. From this consideration is immediately obtained the result that the differential
equations describing this circuit will be identical to the general form of those describing a
series RLC.

However, the analysis of a parallel RLC circuits can be a little more mathematically difficult
than for series RLC circuits so in this tutorial about parallel RLC circuits only pure
components are assumed in this tutorial to keep things simple.
This time instead of the current being common to the circuit components, the applied voltage
is now common to all so we need to find the individual branch currents through each
element. The total impedance, Z of a parallel RLC circuit is calculated using the current of
the circuit similar to that for a DC parallel circuit, the difference this time is that admittance
is used instead of impedance. Consider the parallel RLC circuit below.
Parallel RLC Circuit:
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

In the above parallel RLC circuit, we can see that the supply voltage,
VS is common to all three components whilst the supply current IS consists of three parts. The
current flowing through the resistor, IR, the current flowing through the inductor, IL and the
current through the capacitor, IC.
But the current flowing through each branch and therefore each component will be different
to each other and also to the supply current, IS. The total current drawn from the supply will
not be the mathematical sum of the three individual branch currents but their vector sum.
Like the series RLC circuit, we can solve this circuit using the phasor or vector method but
this time the vector diagram will have the voltage as its reference with the three current
vectors plotted with respect to the voltage. The phasor diagram for a parallel RLC circuit is
produced by combining together the three individual phasors for each component and adding
the currents vectorially.
Since the voltage across the circuit is common to all three circuit elements we can use this as
the reference vector with the three current vectors drawn relative to this at their
corresponding angles. The resulting vector current IS is obtained by adding together two of
the vectors, IL and IC and then adding this sum to the remaining vector IR. The resulting angle
obtained between V and IS will be the circuits phase angle as shown below.

Phasor Diagram for a Parallel RLC Circuit:

 
We can see from the phasor diagram on the right hand side above that the current vectors
produce a rectangular triangle, comprising of hypotenuse IS, horizontal axis IR and vertical
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

axis IL – IC  Hopefully you will notice then, that this forms a Current

Triangle. We can therefore use Pythagoras’s theorem on this current triangle to
mathematically obtain the individual magnitudes of the branch currents along the x-axis and
y-axis which will determine the total supply current IS of these components as shown.

Current Triangle for a Parallel RLC Circuit:

Since the voltage across the circuit is common to all three circuit elements, the current
through each branch can be found using Kirchhoff’s Current Law, (KCL). Rember that
Kirchhoff’s current law or junction law states that “the total current entering a junction or
node is exactly equal to the current leaving that node”. Thus the currents entering and leaving
node “A” above are given as:

Taking the derivative, dividing through the above equation by C and then re-arranging gives
us the following Second-order equation for the circuit current. It becomes a second-order
 Department of Electrical Engineering
The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

equation because there are two reactive elements in the circuit, the
inductor and the capacitor.

 
The opposition to current flow in this type of AC circuit is made up of three
components: XL XC and R with the combination of these three values giving the circuits
impedance, Z. We know from above that the voltage has the same amplitude and phase in all
the components of a parallel RLC circuit. Then the impedance across each component can
also be described mathematically according to the current flowing through, and the voltage
across each element as.

Impedance of a Parallel RLC Circuit:

 
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

You will notice that the final equation for a parallel RLC circuit produces
complex impedance’s for each parallel branch as each element becomes the reciprocal of
impedance, ( 1/Z ). The reciprocal of impedance is commonly called Admittance, symbol
( Y ).
In parallel AC circuits it is generally more convenient to use admittance to solve complex
branch impedance’s especially when two or more parallel branch impedance’s are involved
(helps with the math’s). The total admittance of the circuit can simply be found by the
addition of the parallel admittances. Then the total impedance, ZT of the circuit will therefore
be 1/YT Siemens as shown.

CIRCUIT DIAGRAM:

MATHEMATICAL MODELING:
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

SIMULATION MODELING:
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

APPARATUS/COMPONENTS REQUIRED:

 BASIC TRAINER (DEV-2769) 

 DC Power Supply 
 Multi-meter 
 Resistors
 Connecting wires

PROCEDURE:

 Connect the circuit according to circuit diagram.

 Set the AC supply to 20V by using DMM. Pick the resistors, inductor and capacitor
having values 100Ω, 100Ω, 30mH and 10µF.
 Calculate the total Voltage VT.
 Measure current  across resistor VR, inductor VL and capacitor Vc with DMM and
record it in the Table.
 Calculate inductive reactance Xl, capacitive reactance XC, power factor P, impedance Z,
and phase angle Ø.

OBSERVATIONS & READINGS:

MEASURED VALUES
IT IR IL IC

CALCULATED VALUES
XL XC P Z Ø
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The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad

CALCULATIONS:

PRECAUTIONS:

 Pay full attention in lab.

 Handle the trainer and multi-meter properly.
 Insert the components properly in breadboard.
 Do not disassemble your circuit until your Instructor has been signed off as complete.
 After completion of the lab, switch off the power supply and return the apparatus.

CONCLUSIONS:
In this lab, we have learnt about the CHARACTERISTICS OF RLC
PARALLEL AC CIRCUIT and also went for some experiments. We also simulate a circuit of
this theorem in proteus.