What are loop and Mesh in a Network ?

The study of Network Theory starts with the fundamentals like node, loop, mesh etc. Both a loop and a mesh are closed paths in a given network.

Most of the students misinterpret that both of them are the same. But in fact, they are not ! Let’s see what exactly is the difference between them.

What is the difference between loop and Mesh ?

We will study and know this concept in detail .

The mesh and loop both are the closed path. This is the similarity between them.

The thing that differentiate them is that, a mesh does not have any other closed path inside it whereas loop is also a closed path but it can contain other loops/meshes inside it. Therefore, we can say that Mesh is the subset of loop.

Let us understand this with the help of example :-

Consider the circuit below, here you can see that there is a circuit which contains resistance, inductance and capacitance (RLC circuit) .

Now, from the diagram let us consider point A as starting point . So, ABG becomes the mesh 1 and BG becomes the mesh 2 . As said before, mesh does not have any other closed path inside it. So there are 2 meshes in the circuit.

ABG is the first mesh and BG is the second mesh .

Now, we have to find the loops, we know that loop is also the closed path but it may contain the loops or meshes inside it.

So, in the given circuit there are 3 loops. First one is the two smaller loops which is marked as loop 1 and loop 2 and the third one marked as loop 3 is the big loop which is covering both the meshes.

So, if it is asked to calculate the number of meshes and loops in the circuit? Then your answer will be There are 3 loops and 2 meshes

Simple !!