Half Wave & Full Wave

Rectifier

By,
Saurabh Kaushik(1207036)
Sachin Kaushik(1207016)
Lalit kumar(1207007)

Requirements:

A cathode ray
oscilloscope(CRO).

A breadboard.

Two Diodes.

A transformer.

A Multimeter.

A fractional resistance
box.

Theory :

Most electronics equipments need DC voltage. But AC

voltage is preferred than DC voltage for household
transmission.
Therefore the AC voltage needs to be converted to DC to
operate the equipments.

Rectifiers work on the unidirectional conducting property of

a diode.

Half Wave Rectifier :

Circuit Diagram

During the positive half-cycles, the polarity of the voltage

across the secondary makes the diode forward biased and
allows the current to flow.
In the negative half the diode is reversed biased and current
is not allowed to flow in circuit.

When the input voltage is going through positive halfcycle, the output voltage is almost same as the input
voltage. During the negative half-cycle no voltage is
available across the load. The complete waveform of
Vo across load is shown in fig(b).

Fig(a)
Fig(b)
This voltage is not a perfect DC, but at least
unidirectional, now we apply a capacitor filter to the
same circuit, which will provide us a less rippled DC
output voltage across the load.

Half Wave Rectifier With Filter :

Circuit Diagram

During positive half cycle the diode is forward biased and hence
the capacitor is charging in positive half-cycle upto the time the
Vac reaches its maximum value.
But during negative half-cycle diode is reversed biased and
hence in this half-cycle the left loop of the circuit behaves as
open lop and the capacitor starts discharging, and discharging of
capacitor results flow current in left loop, and potential drop
across load.

After applying a filter, the output voltage in the negative

half-cycle wasnt zero.
The discharging of capacitor gave an exponential drop of
voltage in negative half-cycle as shown in figure:

Waveform of Output Voltage

Full Wave Rectifier:

Circuit Diagram

During positive half-cycle diode D1 is forward biased, and

diode D2 is reversed biased, but during negative half-cycle
D1 is reversed biased, and diode D2 is forward biased.

Therefore the output waveform observed is shown in

figure(b):

fig(a)

fig(b)

Again this voltage is not a perfect DC, but at least

unidirectional, now we apply a capacitor filter to the same
circuit, which will provide us a less rippled DC output
voltage across the load.

Full Wave Rectifier With Filter:

Circuit Diagram

During positive half-cycle diode D1 is forward biased, and Diode D2

reversed biased, as a result the capacitor charges upto the time V ac
reaches its maximum value, then starts discharging until positive
half-cycle is completed.
Then in negative half cycle diode D2 is forward biased, and Diode D1
reversed biased, as a result the capacitor charges upto the time V ac
reaches its maximum value, then starts discharging until negative
half-cycle is completed.

After applying a filter to the Full Wave Rectifier circuit, the

output voltage do not drop to zero in any of the cycle,
because the moment output voltage start dropping from its
maximum value the capacitor start discharging and as a
result an extra supportive current flows through the load.
The output voltage waveform seems like as shown in fig:

Ripple Factor Of Diode Rectifier:

The effectiveness of a rectifier depends upon the

magnitude of AC component in the output, i.e. smaller the
AC component , more effective is the rectifier.
Ripple Factor is a measure of effectiveness of a rectifier
circuit and defined as a ratio of rms value of C component
to the DC component in the rectifier output.

Few Things To Keep In Mind:

It is advisable to operate CRO at a reduced
brightness to avoid the burn out of the
screen.
The rate at which capacitor discharges
depends on the time constant RC, the
longer this time constant is,the steadier is
the output voltage.
The reverse voltage should be less than the
breakdown voltage.