This capacitor performs charging and discharging operation and converts the full wave rippled output to a smooth DC output across the resistor. In the circuit below, you can see that the electrolytic capacitor of 100uF has been connected in parallel to the resistor. These ripple reducing capacitors are often termed as smoothening capacitor. So to reduce the ripples, we can make use of capacitors. Voltage drop across each diode is 1.56V.īut in practical dc application, we can’t use a DC with such a heavy ripples. (10-6.88) = 3.12V is the voltage drop across the diodes. So 10V signal is converted to 6.88V signal without having any negative cycle. You can see the waveforms in the image given below:Īfter measuring using a probe, the rms voltage across the resistor is found to be 6.88V. When we run the simulation, only 2 diodes will conduct in each half cycle and will give rise to a voltage waveform which doesn’t contains any negative half of the original sinusoidal waveform. You can see that 4 diodes are connected in a bridge kind of structure and the oscilloscope is connected across the resistor to observe the voltage waveforms across the resistor. In the negative half cycle, other 2 diodes which were earlier in reverse bias mode will be in forward bias mode and other 2 will be in reverse bias mode.Ĭoming to the simulation of this circuit, the circuit diagram drawn using the NI Multisim is shown below: In the positive half of the cycle, 2 diodes which are in forward bias mode will form the circuit and will conduct. At any instant of time, only 2 diodes will be functional and other 2 will remain idle. This circuit consists of a set of 4 diodes connected in a bridge like structure. Another name of Full wave rectifier is Bridge rectifier as is mentioned in the title of this post.

In this post, I would like to continue with the rectifier circuit, by explaining the full wave rectifier.īasically a rectifier is usually used to rectify the pulses or waveforms of AC to DC. In one of my previous posts we studied about the half wave rectifier and simulated it using the National Instrument’s Multisim Simulation software.

Multisim oscilloscope