Electrical Engineering - Solving System of Equations on Polar Form

[mhuth1776]

I just joined this forum so sorry for the very late reply. I hope this helps people in the future. The easiest way to solve the resulting complex matrices after you have set up the equations is to enter an augmented matrix - so you will have an n x (n+1) matrix. I set my calculator to RPN (why else have an HP calculator 8-), complex format (a,b). This latter settings make copy paste from the stack work. Set your angle to degrees.

Now you can enter the matrix - <shift><5> gets the brackets on the input line. You can now enter the complex numbers for each column in either polar or rectangular format, whichever you have for each entry. Rectangular is entered in () as (R,X) for example. For the first row you can just enter a , between the columns and a new column is added automatically. Make sure you move outside the parentheses if you have just entered a rectangular format number. The polar values can just be entered as modulus <shift> <x> angle, without parentheses.

Once you have all the columns entered in the first row move your cursor to the ± symbol at the end and enter +. This creates a new row with the positions for next entries being obvious from the template. You can move to the next entry with the cursor keys, or by tapping the entry position, or by using a , as before.

Once the n x (n+1) matrix is completed, hit enter, and the matrix will be placed on the stack. Now hit the toolbox and under math->matrix find the RREF function and execute it. Voila, you have your answer in the +1 column, and the remainder of the matrix is I(n) (Identity).

It takes much longer to describe than to execute. I worked this out for my daughter who is taking circuits this year at the university.