Complete Response of First‐Order RC and RL Circuits

Summary

The complete response of a circuit is the response to both initial conditions and input signals. Complete response captures all the circuit response behavior, the combination of both natural response and step response. This chapter presents examples of complete response for series RC and RL circuits, generated by adding the natural response to the step response. It explores two examples of initial capacitor voltage for a series RC circuit. The chapter discusses three examples of initial inductor current for a series RC circuit. The first example is zero inductor current, making it a step response example. The second example has the initial inductor flowing in the same direction as the loop current generated by the step function. In the third example, the initial condition inductor current flows in the opposite direction as the current driven by the input voltage source. The chapter also shows complete response derivations of RC and RL circuits.