In-circuit ESR Measurement Method for Electrolytic Capacitors

Abstract

This paper presents an Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) measurement method that involves the application of short voltage pulses to an electrolytic capacitor. In the proposed method, the value of the ESR is given by linear interpolating the charging curve of the capacitor taking several appropriate points. In order to validate our measurement method, we compared the values obtained from the practical experiments with the results provided by a BK Precision 891 Bench LCR Meter. After comparison, we found that the experimental results are very close to the values provided by the LCR Meter, the maximum relative error being less than 12%.