Development and implementation of an analysis tool for direct current electrical circuits

PEHLİVAN H., ATALAR C., Zavrak S.

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION, cilt.29, sa.5, ss.1071-1086, 2021 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 29 Sayı: 5
  • Basım Tarihi: 2021
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1002/cae.22361
  • Dergi Adı: COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Aerospace Database, Applied Science & Technology Source, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, Computer & Applied Sciences, EBSCO Education Source, INSPEC, Metadex, DIALNET, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1071-1086
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: circuit analysis, circuit description language, educational tool, e&#8208, learning software, graph analysis
  • Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Electrical circuits constitute the core of many courses at the undergraduate level in electrical and electronics engineering. For most undergraduate students, learning and analyzing such circuits are a difficult process. A significant drawback of Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE)-based simulation tools in terms of e-learning is that they only generate circuit simulation outputs, such as the current and voltage of electrical elements contained in a particular circuit. The users are not provided with the detailed information about the steps that are followed to obtain the related outputs. This study describes the development of a new software tool, called ECDAT (a shorthand for the Electrical Circuit Description and Analysis Tool), which can serve as a practical component of electrical circuits courses. The developed tool currently analyzes simple direct electric circuits in a similar way as the existing circuit analysis and simulation ones, and it produces an output document that includes the certain equations and intermediate calculations, using the well-known circuit laws differently from the previous works. Another contribution of the study is that, unlike the modified nodal analysis method used in SPICE-based circuit analysis programs, it employs a graph analysis method for circuit analysis.