Lab 8 - Capacitor Charging/Discharging

Capacitor Charging/Discharging

Objective:

To charge and discharge a capacitor

Process:

1. Problem
      Design, build, and test a charge/discharge system that utilizes a 12v DC power supply, employs a charging interval of 20seconds with a resulting stored energy of 2.5mj and then discharges that 2.5mj in2seconds.

2. Circuit Calculations

Original Circuit

Computing R_th for t <0 and t > 0 of Capacitor

Calculating the Capacitance Required

Calculations for R_discharging and Peak Power and Current for Resistances

3.Built Circuit

4. Data Collected

Final Voltage recorded and length of time it took to discharge 

Time to discharge was 5.15seconds

5. Data Analyzed

Conclusion:

Given the constraints of the problem we were able to able to identify a specified capacitance by analyzing the circuit using the Thevenin resistance and voltage at the a time before it is charged and then discharged. This process fulfilled the objective of learning the practical use of a capacitor and yielded results in the 11% error range. Due to leakage resistance our final voltage digressed completely from our calculated value.