Introduction to Electrical Engineering

On the completion of the course students will be able to: 1. predict the behaviour of any electrical and magnetic circuits; 2. formulate and solve complex AC, DC circuits; 3. identify the type of electrical machine used for that particular application; 4. realise the requirement of transformers in transmission and distribution of electric power and other applications; and 5. function on multi-disciplinary teams.

Electrical circuits (electrical quantities – Units, DC and AC Signals, Root-Mean-Square (RMS) Value, Average Value, Instantaneous Values, Form Factor, Crest Peak or Amplitude Factor); Electrostatics (Introduction, Capacitors, Capacitance, Capacitance of an Isolated Sphere, Spherical Capacitor, Parallel Plate Capacitor, Capacitors in Series and Capacitors in Parallel); magnetism and electromagnetism (Introduction, Absolute and Relative Permeabilities of a Medium, Magnetic Induction (Magnetic Flux Density), Flux Per Unit Pole, Field Intensity or Field Strength, the Production of Magnetic Induction by a Current, Biot-Savart Law (Laplace’s Law), Magnetic Circuit, Comparison of the Electric and Magnetic Circuits Magnetisation Curves; Electromagnetic Induction; Faraday’s Laws of Electromagnetic Induction); Basic laws and theorems (Introduction, Ohm’s Law, Kirchhoff’s Laws, Superposition Theorem, Thevenin Theorem, how to thevenize a given circuit, Delta/Star transformation and Star/Delta transformation); three phase system (Introduction, Relationship between line and phase voltage, Delta connected system with a balanced load, power with balanced 3-phase load, Measurement of Power in a 3-phase three-wire system and Power Factor Measurement); electric power (Introduction, Power in an Alternating Current Circuit, Active, Reactive and Apparent Power, Power Triangle, Power Factor, why improve Power factor, Power factor in a Capacitive Circuit, the Practical importance of Power Factor, Effect of low Power Factor, Power Factor Corrective Equipment, Effect of reactive power consumption, StaticVar Compensations for AC and DC Transmission and Industry, Typical Static Var Compensator, Advantages of Static Var Compensator, Power Factor Economics and Electricity Tariffs); introduction to electrical machines (Electric Machines and Transformers, Classification of Electrical Machines, Basic Equations of DC Machines, Operating mode of DC Machines, Transformers, Ideal Transformer and Efficiency of a Transformer); basic electronics (Introduction, Electronic Tubes, Semi-conductors, Junction Diode, Field Effect Transistor and Optoelectronics); electrical measurement (Measurement of Resistance by the Voltmetre-Ammetre Method, Ohmmetres and A. C. Bridges). 200 Level