root mean square[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: AC power

Alternating Current (green curve). The horizontal axis measures time; the vertical, current or voltage.

A sine wave, over one cycle (360). The dashed line represents the root mean square (RMS) value at about 0.707

It has been suggested that portions of this section be movedinto AC power. (Discuss)

The relationship between voltage and the power delivered is

where

represents a load resistance.

Rather than using instantaneous power, , it is more practical to use a time averaged power (where the averaging is performed over any integer number of cycles). Therefore, AC voltage is often expressed as a root mean square (RMS) value, written as , because

For a sinusoidal voltage:

The factor waveforms.

is called the crest factor, which varies for different

For a triangle waveform centered about zero

For a square waveform centered about zero

For an arbitrary periodic waveform

of period

Example[edit source | editbeta]

To illustrate these concepts, consider a 230 V AC mains supply used in many countries around the world. It is so called because its root mean square value is 230 V. This means that the time-averaged power delivered is equivalent to the power delivered by a DC voltage of 230 V. To determine the peak voltage (amplitude), we can rearrange the above equation to:

For 230 V AC, the peak voltage is therefore , which is about 325 V. The peak-to-peak value of the 230 V AC is double that, at about 650 V.

root mean square (abbreviated RMS or rms), also known as the quadratic mean, is a statistical measure of the magnitude of a varying quantity. It is especially useful when variates are positive and negative, e.g., sinusoids. RMS is used in various fields, including electrical engineering. It can be calculated for a series of discrete values or for a continuously varying function. Its name comes from its definition as the square root of the mean of the squares of the values. It is a special case of the generalized mean with the exponent p = 2.

Definition[edit source | editbeta]

The RMS value of a set of values (or a continuous-time waveform) is the square root of the arithmetic mean (average) of the squares of the original values (or the square of the function that defines the continuous waveform). In the case of a set of formula: values , the RMS value is given by this

The corresponding formula for a continuous function (or waveform) the interval is

defined over

and the RMS for a function over all time is

The RMS over all time of a periodic function is equal to the RMS of one period of the function. The RMS value of a continuous function or signal can be approximated by taking the RMS of a series of equally spaced samples. Additionally, the RMS value of various waveforms can also be determined without calculus, as shown by Cartwright.[1] In the case of the RMS statistic of a random process, the expected value is used instead of the mean.