When dealing with Parallel plate capacitors, what does Maximum Operating Voltage mean?
The max operating voltage is the absolute maximum voltage that the capacitor can tolerate. For direct current cicuits this means that you cannot have the voltage drop across this component go higher than the max. For alternating current, it means that the peak voltage must be lower than the max value for the component. This is important becaue many people confuse peak voltage with rms voltage, which is often 1.4 times lower than the peak voltage. To increase tha max operating voltage of a capacitor, you can look at the equations for capacitance: Q = CV C = KeA/d Looking at the first equation, it is easy to see that you can increase the voltage between the plates as you pile more charge on the capacitor’s plates, but the capacitor’s materials can only handle so much. So to increase C, you can increase the area of the plates or use a more insulating dielectric.
