Showing posts with label BRIDGE RECTIFIER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BRIDGE RECTIFIER. Show all posts
Full Wave Rectifier
In the previous Power Diodes tutorial we discussed ways of reducing the ripple or voltage variations on a direct DC voltage by connecting smoothing capacitors across the load resistance.



While this method may be suitable for low power applications it is unsuitable to applications which need a “steady and smooth” DC supply voltage. One method to improve on this is to use every half-cycle of the input voltage instead of every other half-cycle. The circuit which allows us to do this is called a Full Wave Rectifier.
Like the half wave circuit, a full wave rectifier circuit produces an output voltage or current which is purely DC or has some specified DC component. Full wave rectifiers have some fundamental advantages over their half wave rectifier counterparts. The average (DC) output voltage is higher than for half wave, the output of the full wave rectifier has much less ripple than that of the half wave rectifier producing a smoother output waveform.