RLC

circuit

An RLC circuit is an electrical circuit consisting of a resistor (R), an inductor (L), and a capacitor (C),
connected in series or in parallel. The name of the circuit is derived from the letters that are used to
denote the constituent components of this circuit, where the sequence of the components may vary
from RLC.

A series RLC network (in order): a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor

The circuit forms a harmonic oscillator for current, and resonates in a manner similar to an LC circuit.
Introducing the resistor increases the decay of these oscillations, which is also known as damping.
The resistor also reduces the peak resonant frequency. Some resistance is unavoidable even if a
resistor is not specifically included as a component.

RLC circuits have many applications as oscillator circuits. Radio receivers and television sets use them
for tuning to select a narrow frequency range from ambient radio waves. In this role, the circuit is
often referred to as a tuned circuit. An RLC circuit can be used as a band-pass filter, band-stop filter,
low-pass filter or high-pass filter. The tuning application, for instance, is an example of band-pass
filtering. The RLC filter is described as a second-order circuit, meaning that any voltage or current in
the circuit can be described by a second-order differential equation in circuit analysis.

The three circuit elements, R, L and C, can be combined in a number of different topologies. All three
elements in series or all three elements in parallel are the simplest in concept and the most
straightforward to analyse. There are, however, other arrangements, some with practical importance
in real circuits. One issue often encountered is the need to take into account inductor resistance.
Inductors are typically constructed from coils of wire, the resistance of which is not usually desirable,
but it often has a significant effect on the circuit.

Basic concepts

Resonance

An important property of this circuit is its ability to resonate at a specific frequency, the resonance
frequency, f0. Frequencies are measured in units of hertz. In this article, angular frequency, ω0, is
used because it is more mathematically convenient. This is measured in radians per second. They are
related to each other by a simple proportion,

Resonance occurs because energy for this situation is stored in two different ways: in an electric field
as the capacitor is charged and in a magnetic field as current flows through the inductor. Energy can
be transferred from one to the other within the circuit and this can be oscillatory. A mechanical
analogy is a weight suspended on a spring which will oscillate up and down when released. This is no
passing metaphor; a weight on a spring is described by exactly the same second order differential
equation as an RLC circuit and for all the properties of the one system there will be found an
analogous property of the other. The mechanical property answering to the resistor in the circuit is
friction in the spring–weight system. Friction will slowly bring any oscillation to a halt if there is no
external force driving it. Likewise, the resistance in an RLC circuit will "damp" the oscillation,
diminishing it with time if there is no driving AC power source in the circuit.
The resonance frequency is defined as the frequency at which the impedance of the circuit is at a
minimum. Equivalently, it can be defined as the frequency at which the impedance is purely real (that
is, purely resistive). This occurs because the impedances of the inductor and capacitor at resonance
are equal but of opposite sign and cancel out. Circuits where L and C are in parallel rather than series
actually have a maximum impedance rather than a minimum impedance. For this reason they are often
described as antiresonators; it is still usual, however, to name the frequency at which this occurs as
the resonance frequency.

Natural frequency

The resonance frequency is defined in terms of the impedance presented to a driving source. It is still
possible for the circuit to carry on oscillating (for a time) after the driving source has been removed
or it is subjected to a step in voltage (including a step down to zero). This is similar to the way that a
tuning fork will carry on ringing after it has been struck, and the effect is often called ringing. This
effect is the peak natural resonance frequency of the circuit and in general is not exactly the same as
the driven
resonance frequency, although the two will usually be quite close to each other. Various terms are
used by different authors to distinguish the two, but resonance frequency unqualified usually means
the driven resonance frequency. The driven frequency may be called the undamped resonance
frequency or undamped natural frequency and the peak frequency may be called the damped
resonance frequency or the damped natural frequency. The reason for this terminology is that the
driven resonance frequency in a series or parallel resonant circuit has the value.

This is exactly the same as the resonance frequency of a lossless LC circuit – that is, one with no
resistor present. The resonant frequency for a driven RLC circuit is the same as a circuit in which
there is no damping, hence undamped resonant frequency. The resonant frequency peak amplitude,
on the other hand, does depend on the value of the resistor and is described as the damped resonant
frequency. A highly damped circuit will fail to resonate at all, when not driven. A circuit with a value
of resistor that causes it to be just on the edge of ringing is called critically damped. Either side of
critically damped are described as underdamped (ringing happens) and overdamped (ringing is
suppressed).

Circuits with topologies more complex than straightforward series or parallel (some examples
described later in the article) have a driven resonance frequency that deviates from , and for
those the undamped resonance frequency, damped resonance frequency and driven resonance
frequency can all be different.
Damping

Damping is caused by the resistance in the circuit. It determines whether or not the circuit will
resonate naturally (that is, without a driving source). Circuits that will resonate in this way are
described as underdamped and those that will not are overdamped. Damping attenuation (symbol α)
is measured in nepers per second. However, the unitless damping factor (symbol ζ, zeta) is often a
more useful measure, which is related to α by

The special case of ζ = 1 is called critical damping and represents the case of a circuit that is just on
the border of oscillation. It is the minimum damping that can be applied without causing oscillation.

Bandwidth

The resonance effect can be used for filtering, the rapid change in impedance near resonance can be
used to pass or block signals close to the resonance frequency. Both band-pass and band-stop filters
can be constructed and some filter circuits are shown later in the article. A key parameter in filter
design is bandwidth. The bandwidth is measured between the cutoff frequencies, most frequently
defined as the frequencies at which the power passed through the circuit has fallen to half the value
passed at resonance. There are two of these half-power frequencies, one above, and one below the
resonance frequency

where Δω is the bandwidth, ω1 is the lower half-power frequency and ω2 is the upper half-power
frequency.

The bandwidth is related to attenuation by

where the units are radians per second and nepers per second respectively. Other units may require
a conversion factor. A more general measure of bandwidth is the fractional bandwidth, which
expresses the bandwidth as a fraction of the resonance frequency and is given by

The fractional bandwidth is also often stated as a percentage. The damping of filter circuits is adjusted
to result in the required bandwidth. A narrow band filter, such as a notch filter, requires low damping.
A wide band filter requires high damping.
Q factor

The Q factor is a widespread measure used to characterise resonators. It is defined as the peak energy
stored in the circuit divided by the average energy dissipated in it per radian at resonance. Low-Q
circuits are therefore damped and lossy and high-Q circuits are underdamped. Q is related to
bandwidth; low-Q circuits are wide-band and high-Q circuits are narrow-band. In fact, it happens that
Q is the inverse of fractional bandwidth

Q factor is directly proportional to selectivity, as the Q factor depends inversely on bandwidth.

For a series resonant circuit (as shown below), the Q factor can be calculated as follows:

where is the reactance either of or of at resonance, and

Scaled parameters

The parameters ζ, Bf, and Q are all scaled to ω0. This means that circuits which have similar parameters
share similar characteristics regardless of whether or not they are operating in the same frequency
band.

The article next gives the analysis for the series RLC circuit in detail. Other configurations are not
described in such detail, but the key differences from the series case are given. The general form of
the differential equations given in the series circuit section are applicable to all second order circuits
and can be used to describe the voltage or current in any element of each circuit.

Series circuit
Figure 1: RLC series circuit
V, the voltage source powering the circuit
I, the current admitted through the circuit
R, the effective resistance of the combined load, source, and components
L, the inductance of the inductor component
C, the capacitance of the capacitor component

In this circuit, the three components are all in series with the voltage source. The governing
differential equation can be found by substituting into Kirchhoff's voltage law (KVL) the constitutive
equation for each of the three elements. From the KVL,

where VR, VL and VC are the voltages across R, L, and C, respectively, and V(t) is the time-varying
voltage from the source.

Substituting and into the equation above yields:

For the case where the source is an unchanging voltage, taking the time derivative and dividing by L
leads to the following second order differential equation:

This can usefully be expressed in a more generally applicable form:

α and ω0 are both in units of angular frequency. 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. ω0 is the angular resonance frequency.

For the case of the series RLC circuit these two parameters are given by:

A useful parameter is the damping factor, ζ, which is defined as the ratio of these two; although,
sometimes ζ is not used, and α is referred to as damping factor instead; hence requiring careful
specification of one's use of that term.

In the case of the series RLC circuit, the damping factor is given by

The value of the damping factor determines the type of transient that the circuit will exhibit.

Transient response

Plot showing underdamped and overdamped responses of a series RLC circuit to a voltage input step of 1 V. The critical damping
plot is the bold red curve. The plots are normalised for L = 1, C = 1 and ω0 = 1.
The differential equation has the characteristic equation,
The roots of the equation in s-domain are,

The general solution of the differential equation is an exponential in either root or a linear
superposition of both,

The coefficients A1 and A2 are determined by the boundary conditions of the specific problem being
analysed. That is, they are set by the values of the currents and voltages in the circuit at the onset of
the transient and the presumed value they will settle to after infinite time. The differential equation
for the circuit solves in three different ways depending on the value of ζ. These are overdamped (ζ >
1), underdamped (ζ < 1), and critically damped (ζ = 1).
Overdamped response

The overdamped response (ζ > 1) is

The overdamped response is a decay of the transient current without oscillation.

Underdamped response

The underdamped response (ζ < 1) is

By applying standard trigonometric identities the two trigonometric functions may be expressed as a
single sinusoid with phase shift,

The underdamped response is a decaying oscillation at frequency ωd. The oscillation decays at a rate
determined by the attenuation α. The exponential in α describes the envelope of the oscillation. B1
and B2 (or B3 and the phase shift φ in the second form) are arbitrary constants determined by
boundary conditions. The frequency ωd is given by
This is called the damped resonance frequency or the damped natural frequency. It is the frequency
the circuit will naturally oscillate at if not driven by an external source. The resonance frequency, ω0,
which is the frequency at which the circuit will resonate when driven by an external oscillation, may
often be referred to as the undamped resonance frequency to distinguish it.

Critically damped response

The critically damped response (ζ = 1) is

The critically damped response represents the circuit response that decays in the fastest possible
time without going into oscillation. This consideration is important in control systems where it is
required to reach the desired state as quickly as possible without overshooting. D1 and D2 are
arbitrary constants determined by boundary conditions.

Laplace domain

The series RLC can be analyzed for both transient and steady AC state behavior using the Laplace
transform. If the voltage source above produces a waveform with Laplace-transformed V(s) (where s is
the complex frequency s = σ + jω), the KVL can be applied in the Laplace domain:

where I(s) is the Laplace-transformed current through all components. Solving for I(s):

And rearranging, we have

Laplace admittance

Solving for the Laplace admittance Y(s):

Simplifying using parameters α and ω0 defined in the previous section, we have

Poles and zeros

The zeros of Y(s) are those values of s where Y(s) = 0:

The poles of Y(s) are those values of s where

Y(s) → ∞. By the quadratic formula, we find

The poles of Y(s) are identical to the roots s1 and s2 of the characteristic polynomial of the differential
equation in the section above.

General solution

For an arbitrary V(t), the solution obtained by inverse transform of I(s) is:

In the critically damped case, ω0 = α:

I n t he over damped case, ω 0 < α :

where ωr = √α2 − ω02, and cosh and sinh are the usual hyperbolic functions. Sinusoidal steady state

Bode magnitude plot for the voltages across the elements of an

RLC series circuit. Natural frequency ω0 = 1 rad/s, damping ratio ζ = 0.4.

Sinusoidal steady state is represented by letting s = jω, where j is the imaginary unit. Taking the
magnitude of the above equation with this substitution:
and the current as a function of ω can be found from

There is a peak value of |I(jω)|. The value of ω at this peak is, in this particular case, equal to the
undamped natural resonance frequency:

From the frequency response of the current, the frequency response of the voltages across the
various circuit elements can also be determined.

Parallel circuit

Figure 2. RLC parallel circuit

V – the voltage source powering the circuit
I – the current admitted through the circuit
R – the equivalent resistance of the combined source, load, and components

L – the inductance of the inductor component

C – the capacitance of the capacitor component

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. Considering this, it
becomes clear that the differential equations describing this circuit are identical to the general form
of those describing a series RLC.

For the parallel circuit, the attenuation α is given by

and the damping factor is consequently

Likewise, the other scaled parameters, fractional bandwidth and Q are also reciprocals of each other.
This means that a wide-band, low-Q circuit in one topology will become a narrow-band, high-Q circuit
in the other topology when constructed from components with identical values. The fractional
bandwidth and Q of the parallel circuit are given by

Notice that the formulas here are the reciprocals of the formulas for the series circuit, given above.

Frequency domain

Figure 3. Sinusoidal steady-state analysis. Normalised to R = 1 Ω, C = 1 F, L = 1 H, and V = 1 V.

The complex admittance of this circuit is given by adding up the admittances of the components:

The change from a series arrangement to a parallel arrangement results in the circuit having a peak
in impedance at resonance rather than a minimum, so the circuit is an anti-resonator.
The graph opposite shows that there is a minimum in the frequency response of the current at the
resonance frequency when the circuit is

driven by a constant voltage. On the other hand, if driven by a constant current, there would be a
maximum in the voltage which would follow the same curve as the current in the series circuit.
Variable tuned circuits

A very frequent use of these circuits is in the tuning circuits of analogue radios. Adjustable tuning is
commonly achieved with a parallel plate variable capacitor which allows the value of C to be changed
and tune to stations on different frequencies. For the IF stage in the radio where the tuning is preset
in the factory, the more usual solution is an adjustable core in the inductor to adjust L. In this design,
the core (made of a high permeability material that has the effect of increasing inductance) is
threaded so that it can be screwed further in, or screwed further out of the inductor winding as
required.
Figure 6. RLC circuit as a low- Figure 7. RLC circuit as a high-
pass filter pass filter

Figure 8. RLC circuit as a series Figure 9. RLC circuit as a parallel band-pass filter in series with band-pass filter in shunt
across
the line the line

Figure 10. RLC circuit as a series Figure 11. RLC circuit as a parallel band-stop filter in shunt across band-stop filter in series
with the line the line

In the filtering application, the resistor becomes the load that the filter is working into. The value of
the damping factor is chosen based on the desired bandwidth of the filter. For a wider bandwidth, a
larger value of the damping factor is required (and vice versa). The three components give the
designer three degrees of freedom. Two of these are required to set the bandwidth and resonant
frequency. The designer is still left with one which can be used to scale R, L and C to convenient
practical values. Alternatively, R may
be predetermined by the external circuitry which will use the last degree of freedom.
Low-pass filter

An RLC circuit can be used as a low-pass filter. The circuit configuration is shown in Figure 6. The
corner frequency, that is, the frequency of the 3 dB point, is given by

This is also the bandwidth of the filter. The damping factor is given by

High-pass filter

A high-pass filter is shown in Figure 7. The corner frequency is the same as the low-pass filter:

The filter has a stop-band of this width.

Band-pass filter

A band-pass filter can be formed with an RLC circuit by either placing a series LC circuit in series with
the load resistor or else by placing a parallel LC circuit in parallel with the load resistor. These
arrangements are shown in Figures 8 and 9 respectively. The centre frequency is given by

and the bandwidth for the series circuit is

The shunt version of the circuit is intended to be driven by a high impedance source, that is, a
constant current source. Under those conditions the bandwidth is

Band-stop filter

Figure 10 shows a band-stop filter formed by a series LC circuit in shunt across the load. Figure 11 is a
bandstop filter formed by a parallel LC circuit in series with the load. The first case requires a high
impedance source so that the current is diverted into the resonator when it becomes low impedance
at resonance. The second case requires a low impedance source so that the voltage is dropped across
the antiresonator when it becomes high impedance at resonance.
Oscillators

For applications in oscillator circuits, it is generally desirable to make the attenuation (or equivalently,
the damping factor) as small as possible. In practice, this objective requires making the circuit's
resistance R as small as physically possible for a series circuit, or alternatively increasing R to as much
as possible for a parallel circuit. In either case, the RLC circuit becomes a good approximation to an
ideal LC circuit. However, for very low-attenuation circuits (high Q-factor), issues such as dielectric
losses of coils and capacitors can become important. In an oscillator circuit

or equivalently

As a result,

Voltage multiplier
In a series RLC circuit at resonance, the current is limited only by the resistance of the circuit

If R is small, consisting only of the inductor winding resistance say, then this current will be large. It
will drop a voltage across the inductor of

An equal magnitude voltage will also be seen across the capacitor but in antiphase to the inductor. If
R can be made sufficiently small, these voltages can be several times the input voltage. The voltage
ratio is, in fact, the Q of the circuit,

A similar effect is observed with currents in the parallel circuit. Even though the circuit appears as high
impedance to the external source, there is a large current circulating in the internal loop of the parallel
inductor and capacitor.
Pulse discharge circuit
An overdamped series RLC circuit can be used as a pulse discharge circuit. Often it is useful to know
the values of components that could be used to produce a waveform. This is described by the form

Such a circuit could consist of an energy storage capacitor, a load in the form of a resistance, some
circuit inductance and a switch – all in series. The initial conditions are that the capacitor is at voltage,
V0, and there is no current flowing in the inductor. If the inductance L is known, then the remaining
parameters are given by the following – capacitance:

resistance (total of circuit and load):

initial terminal voltage of capacitor:

Rearranging for the case where R is known – capacitance:

inductance (total of circuit and load):

initial terminal voltage of capacitor: