Talk:Transient response

Diagram request
I added pre-existing damping oscillation diagram. Might still need one more specific to transient response. --Petteri Aimonen (talk) 14:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Rise Time
Under the Rise Time section, there is an error in the information. For an underdamped systems, a 0-100% is used, and for overdamped, 10-90% is used. J Wallace, 11 May 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.0.202.29 (talk) 07:49, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

what the heck is the "fhdtusssst" which was introduced 07:49 20 Apr '06 ?

It would also be useful to define the "starting" point for determination of PEAK TIME. Some methods use a straight line slope from 30%-90% to converge to ground or zero (Virtual origin), others use a calculation. What would be appropriate ? http://pes-spdc.org/sites/default/files/Impulse_generatorsaddedrev2.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.71.24.178 (talk) 16:27, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Incorrect?
I'm pretty sure the natural/transient response is NOT the same thing as the steady-state response (this is a reference to "also known as steady-state response"), unlike what the beginning of the article states. The transient response should be the source-free (no _applied_ or driving voltages) response, and the steady-state should be the driven (resulting from excitation) response. And, of course, complete response is the sum of transient and steady-state responses. So... they're almost definitely not even close to being the same. I think... 65.183.135.40 11:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This was changed at some point so I believe the relationship between transient and steady-state responses is now clear. ~Kvng (talk) 17:37, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

I am so confused by this article. From my textbookS, it seems that the Transient Response is NOT equal to the Natural Response!(though in the first sentance of this article it mentioned "In electrical engineering and Mechanical Engineering, a transient response or natural response is the response of a system to a change from equilibrium." which is highly confusiing!!!)

My books point out that Transient Response should be the part of response which refers to the complete response before it goes to steady-state while Natural Response merely refers to the part caused by the system itself (with initial condition) without any input.

That is, the Complete Response contains both Natural Resopnse and Forced Response, and it is called Transient Response before it enters Steady-State, which is defined to be the section when the response doesn't decay anymore(like the exponentials are all dead out remains only sinusoids or rational functions).

Which does this contradiction mean, my books are wrong or this article is not clear enough?

I believe it should be as follow: natural = steady-state response forced = transient response —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.30.30 (talk) 10:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

114.37.105.6423:34, 4 June 2009 (GMT+8)

I think the piece of missing information in the definition is time. A transient response is a time response (or perhaps "time dependent response" might be a better way of saying it) to a suddenly applied input or initial condition. By definition a transient response decays to 0 over time (or perhaps "towards 0" since mathematically speaking an asymptote never reaches the value it is approaching). The definition currently shown ("response of a system to a change from equilibrium") is, in my opinion, too broad of a defintion for transient response. It looks more like a definition for what could be called "composite response" or "dynamic response" (often used synonymously with vibration, although vibration is typically associated with mechanical motion, while dynamic response can refer to other types of systems [e.g. electrical]).

Given an input into a system [f(t)], the response of that system [y(t)] has two components: the transient response [y1(t)] and the steady state response [y2(t)]. So the "response of a system to a change in equilibrium" is the union of transient response and the steady state response (I'm a little rusty on my laplace transforms so I used union instead of sum since I'm not sure if it's always additive depending on the system and type of input, perhaps some else can shed some light?). The transient is the portion that decays to 0, and the steady state is the portion that does not (note the steady state response of a system to an input may be zero, but it does not "decay" to zero, it's just always zero [e.g. a pendulum with an impulse force applied to it will swing back and forth for a long time (transient response), but will eventually come to rest (steady state)]).

Speaking of impulse, "natural respone" = "transient response" *IF* the input is an impulse. The idea being that the observed behavior of the system after the impulse is entirely dependent upon the properties of the system and not on any additional influence of the input, so it is the "natural" response of the system. However, if I were to input a sinusoid into the system, the resulting "transient response" would not equal the "natural response".

TarkTrain (talk) 22:23, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * We can continue to discuss this but what we really need are some citations to clarify the relationship between transient and natural responses. ~Kvng (talk) 17:37, 23 March 2018 (UTC)


 * I have removed Natural response as an alias. Indications are that Natural response is Transient response + Steady-state response so I have redirected Natural response to Transfer function. ~Kvng (talk) 00:17, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Accusation of copyvio
Some IP editor pasted a copyvio template onto the article. What the hell? The section of text that was supposedly stolen from Ogata's System Dynamics is so general and so short as to make me think that this accusation is from a driveby prankster.

Here is the bottom of the page which is now blanked, and I assume is identified as the section challenged as a violation: (blanked quoted section, as it does contain unsourced direct quotations against WP:NFC.) I hope that helps folks figure why the template was slapped down here. Binksternet (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There's not enough creative text to constitute substantial taking from a book. However, since the material was added by an IP contributor some time ago and is unsourced, I'm going to revise the text with sourced information just to be clear. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:32, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Trawling through google books in search of sourced replacement confirms that at least some of the text was copied directly from the identified book without meeting the requirements of WP:NFC. Again, just to be on the safe side, I've revised the text with direct quotes and attribution. I do not know anywhere near enough about these subjects to attempt a valid paraphrase. :) But I'm off to mark this one resolved at Copyright problems/2009 April 8. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Total Response
The total response of a system may be described as c(t) = natural response + forced response should be discussed. I believe the forced response is input dependent. You may also categorize the poles which contribute to the response; depending on its position on the s-plane. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bostelk (talk • contribs) 01:06, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Separate Mechanics and Electrical Page
There should be separate pages for electrical and mechanical transient. It will solve a lot of confusion. Ken fyre 11:20, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * What specifically is confusing? --Kvng (talk) 13:15, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

well there is no need to understand these transients differently.basically transients are natural processes and are not confined to specifically called for any electric or mechanical system.it can be stated as the unstability or energy or randomness in the system while it is in transition from one state to another.transients are specifically property of the system and not the applied input.or we can say it is the output of the system for the input which is an impulse.due to different system properties or different energy storing elements in the system(capacitors or inductor in case of electrical system),system cant reach the output within in an instant but take some time.this time is known as transition time.this time can be utilized to evaluate the system properties. for eliminating the confusion it can be noted that whenever system ,either mechanical or electrical of any any natural process,input is being changed the considerably its output will change and the time taken taken by the system to adjust with the new given output is transient period and the response is transient response. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.245.13.44 (talk) 16:55, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Transient (oscillation) into Transient response
Scope of both articles is electrical and electronic engineering. fgnievinski (talk) 02:25, 15 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Support ~Kvng (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
 * A transient osscillation is created by and according to the transient response of the system. They are not the same thing but they are closely realated and can be covered in the same article. ~Kvng (talk) 14:15, 26 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Support. Needs some cleanup while you are about it. Oscillation is not caused by a transient response, it is the response. SpinningSpark 14:15, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The Transient (oscillation) is different from Transient response --Wolfch (talk) 08:09, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Notwithstanding that, both articles define their topic as more or less the same so a merge is sensible. In any case "Transient (oscillation)" is a bad title.  The transient stimulus is rarely an oscillation, I suspect the editor means the oscillation resulting from a transient stimulus (and the actual article text supports that).  Which makes it the same topic as "Transient response". SpinningSpark 09:47, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I was going to ask you to explain why these are different but I see that neither or I have given a case for why they are the same.  has though and I assume we'll go with that unless we have other input. ~Kvng (talk) 15:33, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think "Transient (oscillation)" can be renamed to "Transient signal" (Ex. Pulse signal). Transient signals are used in Electromagnetic compatibility. The transient signal is applied to the device under test (DUT). Engineers check whether the device under test work properly after this test. In this case, the effect of transient signal is considered, instead of transient response.--Wolfch (talk) 15:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * If you do that then a large chunk of the article will need removing because it is not about that topic, but rather it is about transient response. The original version of the article had these topics mixed from the beginning (and it was created later than transient response.  If we retain the EMC material in its own article I think a better title would be transient testing.  That's a pretty clear demarcation. SpinningSpark 17:51, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it is ok--Wolfch (talk) 01:41, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I still think it would be better to merge. I have added justification to my original !vote above. ~Kvng (talk) 14:15, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I still think Transient response is different from the general "transient" article. However, I am ok to merge these articles.--Wolfch (talk) 01:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

✅ ~Kvng (talk) 23:26, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support. It is better to have this in one place. Transient response easily includes Transient (oscillation). Constant314 (talk) 14:47, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Half the final value is not the same as half the difference between initial and final state
The current article text contains:

"The delay time is the time required for the response to initially reach half the final value."

This only holds true if the state it started from had zero response (on some scale) and if there were only one dimension of displacement or development or change. And I wonder if the word "initially" was intended to indicate "for the first time". I propose reformulating along the lines of:

"The delay time is the time required for the response to reach a `position' at half the distance (in some sense to be defined) between the previous steady state and the final steady state / value for the first time. (In the case of an underdamped system it may reach that halfway position multiple times before reaching the final / new steady state.)"

I imagine the states of many systems cannot be described by a single figure but rather by a multivalued description like a vector or even a function. I can also imagine systems in which, after an initial `half oscillation', a damped oscillation does not retrace any of the positions that `half oscillation' traversed: a pendulum free to move in two horizontal directions (as well as the vertical one) which is displaced from the rest position and subsequently released with an initial velocity not in the (counter-)direction of the rest position may reach a position at half the original physical / Euclidian distance between the initial and the (final) rest position in a direction different from the angle of the initial displacement.

(Needless to say the proposal text needs some brushing up before it would replace the original text.)Redav (talk) 16:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)


 * @Redav, That is a referenced statement. Before making any changes, please look at the reference.
 * The existing statement is not incorrect IMO. The argument here is about whether it is too imprecise or too incomplete. ~Kvng (talk) 15:28, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The statement is "The delay time is the time required for the response to initially reach half the final value." That would be correct, if the initial state were zero.  So, I would say that it is incomplete.  Zero state is the usual assumption for these types of definition.  That does not mean that delay time does not apply in other conditions or must be measured starting from zero.  But does the importance of discussing all that outway the numbing effect of too much information? Constant314 (talk) 19:57, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * @Kvng, @Constant<b style="color: #1100cc;">314</b> Thanks for your input and for mentioning the reference to the source. The wording in the source is different. More importantly, though, the source works within a different and/or explicit context where the initial value is set to zero. The current article does not give that same context. So I adapted the definition text somewhat, hiding too much information behind "`half' in some appropriate sense".Redav (talk) 20:50, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's really not necessary to make this as difficult to read as that. I've reworded it in much simpler way, but still covering cases with an initial offset. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 10:47, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Rise time
While we are on this subject, I think the diagram is problematic wrt to rise time. Rise time is typically taken as 10% to 90% (as our article says), but the diagram (and it's annotation on Commons) says 0% to 100%. Note that an overdamped response will never get to 100%, so those are not sensible parameters. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 11:11, 16 February 2022 (UTC)