har80679_ch03_065-110.

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C H A P T E R 3
Half-Wave Rectifiers
The Basics of Analysis

3.1 INTRODUCTION
A rectifier converts ac to dc. The purpose of a rectifier may be to produce an out-
put that is purely dc, or the purpose may be to produce a voltage or current wave-
form that has a specified dc component.
In practice, the half-wave rectifier is used most often in low-power applica-
tions because the average current in the supply will not be zero, and nonzero aver-
age current may cause problems in transformer performance. While practical
applications of this circuit are limited, it is very worthwhile to analyze the half-
wave rectifier in detail. A thorough understanding of the half-wave rectifier circuit
will enable the student to advance to the analysis of more complicated circuits
with a minimum of effort.
The objectives of this chapter are to introduce general analysis techniques
for power electronics circuits, to apply the power computation concepts of the
previous chapter, and to illustrate PSpice solutions.

3.2 RESISTIVE LOAD

Creating a DC Component Using an Electronic Switch
A basic half-wave rectifier with a resistive load is shown in Fig. 3-1a. The source
is ac, and the objective is to create a load voltage that has a nonzero dc component.
The diode is a basic electronic switch that allows current in one direction only. For
the positive half-cycle of the source in this circuit, the diode is on (forward-biased).

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66 C H A P T E R 3 Half-Wave Rectifiers

Vm

vs
π 2π ωt
vd
+ − −Vm

i Vm
+ +
vs = Vm sin (ω t) R vo
− − vo
π 2π ωt
..
(a) .
vd
π 2π ωt

−Vm
(b)

Figure 3-1 (a) Half-wave rectifier with resistive load; (b) Voltage waveforms.

Considering the diode to be ideal, the voltage across a forward-biased diode is zero
and the current is positive.
For the negative half-cycle of the source, the diode is reverse-biased, mak-
ing the current zero. The voltage across the reverse-biased diode is the source
voltage, which has a negative value.
The voltage waveforms across the source, load, and diode are shown in
Fig. 3-1b. Note that the units on the horizontal axis are in terms of angle (t).
This representation is useful because the values are independent of frequency.
The dc component Vo of the output voltage is the average value of a half-wave
rectified sinusoid

1 V
Vo  Vavg  V sin(t)d(t)  m (3-1)
2 L m 
0
The dc component of the current for the purely resistive load is
V V
Io  o  m (3-2)
R R
Average power absorbed by the resistor in Fig. 3-1a can be computed from
P  I2rmsR  V2rmsR. When the voltage and current are half-wave rectified sine
waves,

1 V
Vrms  [Vm sin (t)]2 d(t)  m
E 2 L 2
0 (3-3)
Vm
Irms 
2R
In the preceding discussion, the diode was assumed to be ideal. For a real
diode, the diode voltage drop will cause the load voltage and current to be
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3.3 Resistive-Inductive Load 67

reduced, but not appreciably if Vm is large. For circuits that have voltages much
larger than the typical diode drop, the improved diode model may have only
second-order effects on the load voltage and current computations.

EXAMPLE 3-1

Half-Wave Rectifier with Resistive Load

For the half-wave rectifier of Fig. 3-1a, the source is a sinusoid of 120 V rms at a fre-
quency of 60 Hz. The load resistor is 5 . Determine (a) the average load current, (b) the
average power absorbed by the load and (c) the power factor of the circuit.
■ Solution
(a) The voltage across the resistor is a half-wave rectified sine wave with peak value
Vm  120 12  169.7 V. From Eq. (3-2), the average voltage is Vm , and
average current is
Vo Vm 22(120)
Io     10.8 A
R R 5
(b) From Eq. (3-3), the rms voltage across the resistor for a half-wave rectified sinusoid is
Vm 22(120)
Vrms    84.9 V
2 2
The power absorbed by the resistor is
2
V rms 84.9 2
P   1440 W
R 4
The rms current in the resistor is Vm (2R)  17.0 A, and the power could also be
calculated from I2rmsR  (17.0)2(5)  1440 W.
(c) The power factor is
P P 1440
pf     0.707
S Vs, rms Is, rms (120)(17)

3.3 RESISTIVE-INDUCTIVE LOAD

Industrial loads typically contain inductance as well as resistance. As the source
voltage goes through zero, becoming positive in the circuit of Fig. 3-2a, the
diode becomes forward-biased. The Kirchhoff voltage law equation that
describes the current in the circuit for the forward-biased ideal diode is
di(t)
Vm sin(t)  Ri(t)  L (3-4)
dt
The solution can be obtained by expressing the current as the sum of the
forced response and the natural response:
i(t)  i f (t)  i n(t) (3-5)