Description
This is a first course on the fundamental aspects of electromagnetic fields. The following topics are covered: vector analysis, including orthogonal coordinate systems, and the calculus of field quantities; electrostatic fields including the concepts of electric potential, capacitance, and current and current density; magnetostatic fields including inductance; time varying fields and the complete form of Maxwell's equations; basic transmission line phenomena including steady-state sinusoidal behaviour and standing waves, transient performance and impedance matching. This course builds on and supplements knowledge from other courses, including APSC 111, APSC 11, APSC 171, APSC 172, and APSC 174.
Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs)
- Understand the transmission of the electromagnetic energy along transmission lines.
- Use the Smith chart to analyze the transmission lines and to develop an impedance matching network.
- Describe the three orthogonal coordinate systems, and transform between the systems.
- Describe the gradient of a scalar field, the divergence of a vector filed, and the curl of a vector filed.
- Describe the fundamental concepts of electrostatic field theory including capacitance, electric potential, current, and boundary conditions.
- Describe the fundamental concepts of magnetostatic filed theory including inductance and boundary conditions.
- Understand the concepts of time-varying electromagnetic fields, and apply Maxwell's equations to analyze the time-varying circuits.
Credit Breakdown
Lecture: 3
Lab: 0.25
Tutorial: 0.5
Academic Unit Breakdown
Mathematics 10
Natural Sciences 27
Complementary Studies 0
Engineering Science 18
Engineering Design 0
Course Structure and Activities
Week 1: The importance of electromagnetics; units and notation; traveling waves; the electromagnetic spectrum; complex numbers and the phasor transform; transmission lines: general considerations
Week 2: Transmission lines: lumped-element model, transmission line equations, wave propagation equations, the lossless transmission line, voltage reflection coefficient, standing waves
Week 3: Transmission lines: standing waves, input impedance of the lossless line, special cases of the lossless line, power flow on a lossless transmission line
Week 4: Transmission lines: Transients on transmission lines, the Smith chart
Week 5: Impedance matching, basic laws of vector analysis, orthogonal coordinate systems
Week 6: Transformations between coordinate systems, gradient of a scalar field, divergence of a vector field, curl of a vector field
Week 7: Laplacian operator, Maxwell's equations, charge densities, Coulomb's law
Week 8: Gauss's law, Electric scalar potential, conductors
Week 9: Electric boundary conditions, capacitance, electrostatic potential energy
Week 10: Magnetic forces and torque, the Biot-Savart law
Week 11: Magnetic forces between two parallel conductors, magnetic properties, magnetic boundary conditions, inductance
Week 12: Faraday's law, stationary loop in a time-varying magnetic field, moving conductor in a static magnetic field
Laboratory Studies:
The lectures are complemented with two laboratory experiments in Weeks 5 and 11.
Tutorials:
Sample problems will be covered weekly to help with the understanding of the course material on the theoretical side. The hour-long tutorials are intended to be interactive directed at filling the gaps in the students' comprehension of the notions.
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