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It is the time required to charge the capacitor, through the resistor, from an initial charge voltage of zero to approximately 63.2% of the value of an applied DC voltage, or to discharge the capacitor through the same resistor to approximately 36.8% of its initial charge voltage.
where C is the capacitance of the capacitor. Solving this equation for V yields the formula for exponential decay: =, where V 0 is the capacitor voltage at time t = 0. The time required for the voltage to fall to V 0 / e is called the RC time constant and is given by, [1]
The SI unit of capacitance is the farad (symbol: F), named after the English physicist Michael Faraday. [2] A 1 farad capacitor, when charged with 1 coulomb of electrical charge, has a potential difference of 1 volt between its plates. [3] The reciprocal of capacitance is called elastance.
This time constant determines the charge/discharge time. A 100 F capacitor with an internal resistance of 30 mΩ for example, has a time constant of 0.03 • 100 = 3 s. After 3 seconds charging with a current limited only by internal resistance, the capacitor has 63.2% of full charge (or is discharged to 36.8% of full charge).
In the short-time limit, if the capacitor starts with a certain voltage V, since the voltage drop on the capacitor is known at this instant, we can replace it with an ideal voltage source of voltage V. Specifically, if V=0 (capacitor is uncharged), the short-time equivalence of a capacitor is a short circuit.
α is called the neper frequency, or attenuation, and is a measure of how fast the transient response of the circuit will die away after the stimulus has been removed. Neper occurs in the name because the units can also be considered to be nepers per second, neper being a logarithmic unit of attenuation. ω 0 is the angular resonance frequency. [3]
Continuous charge distribution. The volume charge density ρ is the amount of charge per unit volume (cube), surface charge density σ is amount per unit surface area (circle) with outward unit normal n̂, d is the dipole moment between two point charges, the volume density of these is the polarization density P.
The voltage (v) on the capacitor (C) changes with time as the capacitor is charged or discharged via the resistor (R) In electronics, when a capacitor is charged or discharged via a resistor, the voltage on the capacitor follows the above formula, with the half time approximately equal to 0.69 times the time constant, which is equal to the product of the resistance and the capacitance.