Capacitance Wizard

Capacitance wizard helps you to calculate self and mutual capacitance of your conductors.

When your model contains several conductors, the charge of one of them can be calculated as:

q_k = C_kkU_k + C_nkU_n,

where

C_kk is the self capacitance of the conductor k,

C_nk is the mutual capacitance between the conductors n and k,

U_k is the voltage drop on the conductor k.

On the other hand stored energy also derives from charge and capacitance as:

W = ½·(q_k²/C_kk + q_kq_n/C_nk),

and from the voltage and capacitance as:

W = ½·(C_kkU_k² + C_nkU_kU_n).

Before using the capacitance wizard, you have to formulate your problem in such a way that all field sources (space, surface or linear distributed charge or voltage) but one are set to zero. In that case equation above becomes extremely simple and you can get capacitance value if you know any two of these three quantities: charge, voltage, stored energy.

When formulating your problem, you can apply known voltage to the conductor and measure the charge it produce or vice versa. Measuring the charge is a bit more complex than the voltage. It requires you to build the closed contour surrounding your conductor (but not coinciding with its surface) before you start the capacitance wizard. The easiest way to formulate the problem for capacitance calculating is to put constant potential boundary condition on the conductor's surface and specify an arbitrary non zero electric charge in one of the vertices on the surface of the conductor.

If your problem formulation fits the requirements above click Next button.