Electronic – how does current go to infinity in an ideal LC circuit at resonance

oscillatorresonance

Consider an ideal LC series circuit, excited by a sinusoidal source at resonant frequency. Assume zero initial conditions, for capacitor voltage and inductor current.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

1) Can anyone explain how does the current amplitude go to infinity, at resonance?

I understand the impedance goes to zero,which explains the steady state current as infinite.
But can you explain the same by simple circuit analysis?I mean the voltage across inductor is Vsinωt – Vc = L di/dt, so based on derivative being positive, the current increases.But what makes the current go to infinite? After all for a simple L only circuit, the voltage across inductor is Vsinωt = L di/dt and it is not getting infinite

2)Now at resonance what happens internally, from an energy perspective?Is there any transfer of energy between inductor and capacitor OR Source is throughout supplying energy to inductor and capacitor?

3)Will the nature of current differ if we have initial conditions?

Best Answer

Can anyone explain how does the current amplitude go to infinity, at resonance?

The brief answer is that the AC steady state current isn't infinite but, rather, the circuit has no AC steady state solution.

Recall that one of the assumptions justifying AC (phasor) analysis is that the circuit is in AC steady state, i.e., that all transients have decayed.

For the circuit given, the time domain solution for the current is proportional to

$$i(t) \propto t \cos\left( \frac{t}{\sqrt{LC}}\right),\, t \ge 0$$

The amplitude of the current starts at zero and grows linearly with time once the switch is closed but for any value of time \$t\$, the current is finite, i.e., the current is never infinite.

Note that this solution has no sinusoidal steady state - the amplitude does not approach a constant as \$t \rightarrow \infty\$ so this solution has no phasor representation and, thus, we should not be surprised that applying phasor analysis to this problem produces an undefined division by zero result.

Given the solution for the current, one can solve for the voltages across the inductor and capacitor as well as the energy stored in each as a function of time.

Different initial conditions will have different initial energies but will not affect the main result that the amplitude of the current will grow without bound once the switch is closed.


Can you please list the steps that lead to the derivation of the expression i(t)∝ tcos(t/√LC),t≥0 ?

By KVL, we have

$$v_S = v_L + v_C = L\frac{di}{dt} + \frac{1}{C}\int_0^ti(\tau)d\tau$$

(we assume zero initial voltage across the capacitor).

Differentiating both sides with respect to time and dividing through by \$L\$ yields

$$\frac{d^2i}{dt^2} + \frac{1}{LC}i = \frac{1}{L}\frac{dv_S}{dt}$$

Assuming \$v_S = V\cos\omega_0 t\$ yields the following non-homogeneous 2nd order ODE:

$$\frac{d^2i}{dt^2} + \frac{1}{LC}i = -\frac{\omega_0 V}{L}\sin \omega_0 t $$

where

$$\omega_0 = \frac{1}{\sqrt{LC}} $$

Assume a solution of the form

$$i(t) = t\left(A \cos \omega_0 t + B \sin \omega_0 t \right) $$

Substitute this \$i(t)\$ into the ODE to find

$$A = \frac{V}{2L}, B = 0 $$