Electrical Engineering Fundamentals

S. Bobby Rauf

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000284980
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Construction & Architectural Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Many, in their quest for knowledge in engineering, find typical textbooks intimidating. Perhaps due to an extensive amount of physics theory, an overwhelming barrage of math, and not enough practical application of the engineering principles, laws, and equations. Therein lies the difference between this text and those voluminous and daunting conventional university engineering textbooks. This text leads the reader into more complex and abstract content after explaining the electrical engineering concepts and principles in an easy to understand fashion, supported by analogies borrowed from day-to-day examples and other engineering disciplines. Many complex electrical engineering concepts, for example, power factor, are examined from multiple perspectives, aided by diagrams, illustrations, and examples that the reader can easily relate to.

Throughout this book, the reader will gain a clear and strong grasp of electrical engineering fundamentals, and a better understanding of electrical engineering terms, concepts, principles, laws, analytical techniques, solution strategies, and computational techniques. The reader will also develop the ability to communicate with professional electrical engineers, controls engineers, and electricians on their "wavelength" with greater confidence. Study of this book can help develop skills and preparation necessary for succeeding in the electrical engineering portion of various certification and licensure exams, including Fundamentals of Engineering (FE), Professional Engineering (PE), Certified Energy Manager (CEM), and many other trade certification tests. This text can serve as a compact and simplified electrical engineering desk reference. This book provides a brief introduction to the NEC®, the Arc-Flash Code, and a better understanding of electrical energy and associated cost. If you need to gain a better understanding of myriad battery alternatives available in the market, their strengths and weaknesses, and how batteries compare with capacitors as energy storage devices, this book can be a starting point.

This book is ideal for engineers, engineering students, facility managers, engineering managers, program/project managers, and other executives who do not possess a current working knowledge of electrical engineering. Because of the simple explanations, analogies, and practical examples employed by the author, this book serves as an excellent learning tool for non-engineers, technical writers, attorneys, electrical sales professionals, energy professionals, electrical equipment procurement agents, construction managers, facility managers, and maintenance managers.

1 Fundamental Electrical Engineering Concepts and Principles

Introduction

In this first chapter of the Electrical Engineering Fundamentals text, we will explore fundamental electrical engineering terms, concepts, principles, and analytical techniques and impart knowledge that is considered elemental in the discipline of electrical engineering. Readers who invest time and effort in studying this text are likely to do so for the key purpose of gaining an introduction into the field of electricity. In this chapter, we will lay the foundations in the electrical engineering realm by covering basic electrical engineering terms, concepts, and principles, without the understanding of which, discussion and study of terms that bear important practical significance, such as power factor, real power, reactive power, apparent power, and load factor, would be untenable.

Most of the material in this chapter pertains to DC, or direct current, electricity. However, some entities discussed in this chapter such as capacitive reactance, inductive reactance, and impedance are fundamentally entrenched in the AC, alternating current, realm.

This text affirms that electrical engineering is rooted in the field of physics and chemistry. Physics, chemistry, and electrical engineering, as most other subject matters in science, depend on empirical proof of principles and theories. Empirical analysis and verification require tools and instruments for measurement of various parameters and entities. Hence, after gaining a better understanding of the basic electrical concepts, we will conclude this chapter with an introduction to three of the most common and basic electrical instruments, namely, multi-meter, clamp-on ammeter, and a scope meter or oscilloscope.

Voltage or EMF (Electromotive Force)

Voltage can be defined as a “force” that moves or pushes electrically charged particles like electrons, holes, negatively charged ions, or positively charged ions by forming an electric field. The term “electromotive” force stems from the early recognition of electrical current as something that consisted, strictly, of the movement of “electrons.” Nowadays, however, with the more recent breakthroughs in the renewable and non-traditional electrical power generating methods and systems like microbial fuel cells and hydrocarbon fuel cells, electrical power is being harnessed, more and more, in the form of charged particles that may not be electrons. In batteries, such as those used in automobiles, as we will see in the batteries chapter, the flow of current driven by voltage potential difference consists not only of negatively charged electrons, e⁻, but also types of ions, including H⁺ and HSO₄⁻ ions.¹

Two, relatively putative, analogies for voltage in the mechanical and civil engineering disciplines are pressure and elevation. In the mechanical realm – or more specifically in the fluid and hydraulic systems – high pressure or pressure differential pushes fluid from one point to another and performs mechanical work. Similarly, voltage – in the form of voltage difference between two points, as with the positive and negative terminals of an automobile battery – moves electrons or charged particles through loads such as motors, coils, resistive elements, wires, or conductors.

As electrons or charged particles are pushed...