Electrical – Node voltage analysis on circuit with a dependant voltage source

circuit analysiskirchhoffs-lawsvoltage

circuit
circuit-workings
I am carrying out node voltage analysis on a circuit that has 2 voltage sources.

  • One source is independent
  • The other is dependent on a current through a resistor in the circuit

After i carry out my analysis i have equations for the unknown node voltages however one equation contains the dependent source as per KCL.

Question

In essence i need to know what i am missing in my analysis,

  • should the current be found first through superposition?

all help is greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

Without dependent (voltage) sources one could normally define a matrix equation to solve for the values in the network:
[Z][I] = [V]

In this case though we must add in dependent voltage sources
[Z][I] = [V] + [k][I]

Apologies, I renamed I3 above as I2 below, per the usual custom of ordering currents left to right as shown in sketch. enter image description here

From this diagram, we extract the matrix equation suggested above. enter image description here

This rearranges as
[Z][I] - [k][I] = [V]

Rearranging again [I] = ([Z]-[k])^-1 · [V]

Solution of the matrix math is standard matrix math left to the reader. It produces an equation for each of the 3 currents defined in the sketch as a function of the single independent voltage.

This gives the currents as a function of the one independent voltage.

At this point
Va = (I1 - I2)·R2

And Vb = (I2 - I3)·R4