ABSTRACT

In electrical engineering, a phasor is a rotating vector representing a quantity such as an alternating current or voltage that varies sinusoidally. Sometimes it is necessary when studying sinusoidal quantities to add together two alternating waveforms, for example in an a.c. series circuit, where they are not in-phase with each other. Electrical engineers, electronics engineers, electronic engineering technicians and aircraft engineers all use phasor diagrams to visualise complex constants and variables. So, given oscillations to add and subtract, the required rotating vectors are constructed, called a phasor diagram, and graphically the resulting sum and/or difference oscillation are added or calculated. Phasors may be used to analyse the behaviour of electrical and mechanical systems that have reached a kind of equilibrium called sinusoidal steady state. Hence, discovering different methods of combining sinusoidal waveforms is of some importance in certain areas of engineering.