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EMC Question of the Week: April 22, 2019
Which of the following common EMC topologies can be modeled as a series RLC circuit?
- decoupling capacitors
- electrostatic discharge events
- radiating structures at resonance
- all of the above
Answer
The correct answer is "d." In fact, there are many configurations of interest to EMC engineers that can be modeled as RLC circuits. Reduced down to their simplest form, the key parameters of these configurations are often represented by simple series or parallel circuits with one R, one C and one L. Prof. Tom Van Doren, at the University of Missouri-Rolla (now Missouri S&T), was so good at this they wrote a song about it.
Recognizing the key parameters contributing to an EMC problem and reducing the problem to it's most basic elements is an important skill for EMC engineers. Of course, once a problem is reduced to it's most basic form you still need to be able to solve it. For this reason, EMC engineers should generally be familiar with the behavior of series and parallel RLC circuits in the time and frequency domains.
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