MEng Electronic Engineering / Course details

• Physical concept of electric current. Current density. Conductors, semiconductors, and superconductors. Voltage sources. Electric field inside a current-carrying conductor. Ohm’s law and resistance. Resistivity and conductivity. Ohm’s law in microscopic terms. Power loss and loss density. Fuses. Current flow in massive conductors. Kirchhoff’s nodal law. Lightning.
• Electric charge. Coulomb’s Law. Principal of superposition. Electric field. Field lines as lines of force. Motion of a charged particle in an electric field. Gauss’ Law in free space. Symmetrical distributions (points, spheres, lines, planes). Work done in moving a charge. Electric potential. Equipotentials and field lines. Superposition of potentials.
• Conductors in static electric fields. Dielectrics and polarisation. Breakdown of dielectric materials. Flux density. Generalisation of Gauss’ Law. Boundary conditions.
• General concept of capacitance. Calculation of capacitance for simple geometries (planes, concentric cylinders, concentric spheres). Capacitors as energy stores.
• Relativistic origins of magnetic field (as background only) Lorenz force. Magnetic force on a moving charge. Magnetic flux density. Motion of a charge in a magnetic field. Force on a current-carrying conductor. Force on a current-carrying circular loop.
• Magnetic materials. Ferromagnetism. Hysteresis loops. Hard and soft magnetic materials. Permanent magnet materials.
• Electric current as the source of the magnetic field. Biot-Savart Law. Field produced by a straight-line filament. Ampere’s Law in air. Force between two current-carrying conductors.
• Simple magnetic circuits, such as C-cores. Load-line constructions to allow for saturation. Load-line calculations with permanent magnet devices.
• Magnetic flux and flux linkages. Faraday’s law. Lenz’s Law. Flux linking rule and flux cutting rule. Rotating coil in stationary magnetic field. Fundamentals of transformer action. Eddy currents in massive conductors - the need for lamination.
• Self- and mutual inductance. Energy stored in a magnetic field in terms of inductance. Calculation of inductance from stored energy. Force and torque in terms of changing inductance.

Lectures, supported tutorial questions using problem based examples, laboratories with finite element analysis for e-learning