Electronic – Thevenin Equivalent With Two Voltage Sources

thevenin

I've been working through a few examples of Thevenin Equivalent circuits, and came across this one.

Find the Thevenin Equivalent circuit as seen by a load resistance between points A and B.

Finding the equiv. resistance wasn't too hard (75ohms), but I'm having trouble calculating the equiv. voltage.

I've attempted the questions, but am not sure I got the correct answer. Here's my working.

The total voltage of the circuit is 12V because of two aiding voltage sources being in series. From this, you can use a voltage divider between the two 150ohm resistors, getting a value of 6V. Another voltage divider can be used to find the voltage at node B, that being 2.4V.

Not sure I've done the next thing correctly –

I've assumed that Node A is 3V, and since the Thevenin voltage is the difference between Node A and B, Thevenin Voltage = 3-2.4 = 0.6V. Have I done this question correctly?

Figure 1

Anywho, any help is greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

I think there was some confusion in the comments, so I'll write up an answer.

The circuit we're talking about is:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Note that I've left out the load - it has nothing to do with your Thevenin equivalent.

Your goal is to make a circuit that looks like:

schematic

simulate this circuit

so you need to find two things: the equivalent resistance and the Thevenin voltage. You already found \$R_{eq} = 75 \Omega\$, so I won't go over that.

The Thevenin voltage of a circuit is the same as the open circuit voltage: when you leave the load disconnected, \$V_{th} = V_{ab}\$. That means that all you need to do is find \$V_a\$ and \$V_b\$ with no load.

\$V_a\$ is easy - it's just 3 V - so the harder part is $$ V_b = (3V + 9V) \frac{100 \Omega}{150\Omega + 150\Omega + 100\Omega} = 3 V $$ so $$ V_{th} = V_a - V_b = 0 V $$

That means the Thevenin equivalent of this circuit is just a 75 ohm resistor - there's no voltage across the terminals.

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