Using PSpice to find the Transient Response

Objective After going through this exercise, each student will learn how to use PSpice to find the transient response for various circuits. Specifically, this handout shows how to find the transient response of first order RL and RC circuits. Procedure Open PSpice Schematics and click on Draw => Get New Part. Scroll down through the parts list and choose an inductor (represented by the symbol L). Place this part on your worksheet. Similarly, place a resistor on your worksheet (symbol R) and a ground (symbol GND_EARTH). Finally, place a squarewave source (symbol VPULSE). Click on Draw => Wire to bring up the wiring tool, and connect the circuit elements together to obtain a circuit that looks like the one shown in Figure 1. Note that the voltage marker can be added by selecting Markers => Mark Voltage/Level. Tip: You can rotate a part by pressing Control-R.

Figure 1: RL Circuit

Now, if you have not already done so, set the resistance to 1 k? and the inductance to 0.2 H by double-clicking on the respective value. Next, double click on the voltage source. For the first voltage, V1, type in 0 and then click on Save Attribute. Similarly, type in 8 for the second voltage, V2, and save the attribute. Next set both the rise time, TR, and fall time, TF, to 0.000001. Set the pulse width, PW to 0.001 and the period, PER to 0.002. Click on Ok to exit this menuthe voltage source has been properly set up to generate a 500 Hz waveform. Now, click on Settings => Setup. Check the box next to Transient. Click on the Transient button. The End Time denotes how far out the simulation will go in time, and the print step determines the spacing between each point used in the graph. For this problem, use an end time of 0.1 seconds and a print step of 0.00001 seconds. Click Ok to exit all of the pop-up menus.

Click on Analysis => Simulate. At this point the probe window should pop up and show you the voltage drop across the inductor. If you want to zoom in, one effective method is to use the zoom area featureclick on View => Area. Now, simply draw a box on the plot around the area you would like to see in greater detail. Verify the time constant by inspecting the transient response. Now, draw the RC circuit shown in Fig. 2. Once the circuit is constructed properly, click on Analysis => Simulate. Note: The capacitor component is simply represented by C. Verify the time constant by inspecting the transient response.

Figure 2: RC Circuit