Recently, Yang Liu, a 2020 undergraduate student majoring in Robotics Engineering at our institute, published a research paper titled "Theoretical analysis and experimental verification of fractional-order RC cobweb circuit network" in the internationally renowned journal "Chaos, Solitons & Fractals" (SCI Q1 journal with an impact factor of 9.922), in the field of nonlinear dynamics. This work was accomplished in collaboration with leading international scholars in fractional calculus, Professor Yangquan Chen from the University of California, Merced, and Professor António M. Lopes from the University of Porto, Portugal. Hefei University of Technology is the first affiliation and corresponding institution for this work, with Professor Liping Chen from the School of Electrical Engineering as the corresponding author. Yang Liu, an undergraduate student from the School of Electrical Engineering, is the first author of the paper, and Xiaobo Wu, a doctoral student from the School of Electrical Engineering, and Fengqi Cui, an undergraduate student from the School of Microelectronics, are co-authors of the work.

This work investigates a class of 2*n-order cobweb-shaped RC circuit networks with a central node. By applying Kirchhoff's laws and utilizing difference equations and matrix transformations, the magnitude and phase of the impedance between two points in the circuit network are derived. Three expressions for impedance are derived and their correctness is verified through numerical calculations and simulations. The study examines the impact of various parameters, including resistance, capacitance, number of circuit units, frequency, and fractional-order, on the impedance and phase of the electrical network. Furthermore, in the field of fractional-order circuit networks, a physical experiment is conducted to compare the performance of fractional-order and integer-order circuit networks in describing the impedance of real physical circuit networks. The experimental results demonstrate that the fractional-order circuit network model outperforms the integer-order circuit network model in characterizing the magnitude and phase characteristics of impedance.

This research work was supported by two grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61403115; 11571016). The project was completed under the guidance of Professor Liping Chen.

Text by Panpan Gu, Photo by Yang Liu