ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the three basic types of responses that are possible with second-order circuits, namely, overdamped, critically damped, and underdamped responses, and explores the main characteristic features of these responses. It discusses the natural responses of the prototypical series and parallel circuits. These natural responses are due to initial energy storage in capacitors or inductors, in the absence of any other excitation. The chapter is concerned with the responses of the prototypical circuits to applied, steady excitations. It presents an appendix that outlines the procedure for deriving the natural responses of more general second-order circuits and the responses of these circuits to applied dc excitations. A second-order LTI circuit is so called because its responses obey a second-order, linear, ordinary differential equation with constant coefficients.
