Elastance

Electrical elastance is the reciprocal of capacitance. The SI unit of elastance is the inverse farad (F⁻¹). The concept is not widely used by electrical and electronic engineers. The value of capacitors is invariably specified in units of capacitance rather than inverse capacitance. However, it is used in theoretical work in network analysis and has some niche applications at microwave frequencies.

The term elastance was coined by Oliver Heaviside through the analogy of a capacitor as a spring. The term is also used for analogous quantities in some other energy domains. It maps to stiffness in the mechanical domain, and is the inverse of compliance in the fluid flow domain, especially in physiology. It is also the name of the generalised quantity in bond-graph analysis and other schemes analysing systems across multiple domains.