Electrical – How to construct a differential equation from this RLC circuit

passive-networks

I'm trying to figure out how to construct a differential equation for the natural response of the following circuit and I am having trouble. The capacitor is initially charged with a voltage \$v_0\$ and I want to solve for \$v(t)\$, the voltage across the capacitor.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Here is my attempt so far:

By Kirchhoff's laws, \$v_L=v_2\$, \$v=v_1+v_L\$, and \$i_1+i_2+i_3=0\$.
The currents and voltages are defined so that \$i_1=-\frac{v_1}{R_1}=C\frac{dv}{dt}\$, \$i_2=\frac{1}{L}\int{v_Ldt}\$, and \$i_3=\frac{v_2}{R_2}=\frac{v_L}{R_2}\$. $$C\frac{dv}{dt}+\frac{1}{L}\int{v_Ldt}+\frac{v_L}{R_2}=0$$ And I cannot come up with an equation the exclusively solves for \$v\$. Is there even an existing solution to this problem?

Best Answer

You just need to add one more equation

$$v_1 = -i_1 R_1$$ $$v_1 = -CR_1\frac{dv}{dt}$$

Thus $$ v_L = v - v_1 = v + C R_1 \frac{dv}{dt}$$

Now you can substitute in your integro-differential equation to get an equation with just one variable

$$C\frac{dv}{dt} + \frac{1}{L}\int_{-\infty}^t (v + CR_1\frac{dv}{dt})dt +\frac{v+CR_1\frac{dv}{dt}}{R_2} = 0$$

From here you can rearrange terms and take derivatives until you reach a differential equation in one variable, that can be solved by the usual methods (recognizing a known form, Laplace transform, etc.)