Discharging a Capacitor Definition: Discharging a capacitor is defined as releasing the stored electrical charge within the capacitor. Circuit Setup: A charged capacitor is connected in series with a resistor, and the circuit is short-circuited by a switch to start discharging.
Capacitor Discharge Graph: The capacitor discharge graph shows the exponential decay of voltage and current over time, eventually reaching zero. What is Discharging a Capacitor? Discharging a capacitor means releasing the stored electrical charge. Let’s look at an example of how a capacitor discharges.
Discharging a capacitor means releasing the stored electrical charge. Let’s look at an example of how a capacitor discharges. We connect a charged capacitor with a capacitance of C farads in series with a resistor of resistance R ohms. We then short-circuit this series combination by closing the switch.
For a RC discharging circuit, the voltage across the capacitor ( VC ) as a function of time during the discharge period is defined as: Just like the previous RC Charging circuit, we can say that in a RC Discharging Circuit the time required for a capacitor to discharge itself down to one time constant is given as: Where, R is in Ω and C in Farads.
A simple capacitor discharging circuit. Rate of discharge depends on the current value of charges on the plates, which leads to charge decaying exponentially. Let Q0 Q 0 be the starting charge at t= 0. t = 0. Then, using Calculus, it will be shown below that charge remaining on capacitor at time t t will be Q(t)= Q0e−t/RC. Q (t) = Q 0 e − t / R C.
As the capacitor discharges its current through the series resistor the stored energy inside the capacitor is extracted with the voltage Vc across the capacitor decaying to zero as shown below. As we saw in the previous tutorial, in a RC Discharging Circuit the time constant ( τ ) is still equal to the value of 63%.