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Trends in Electrical Engineering

The Analysis of Bridge Rectifier Circuits using Mathematica

  1. Mohamed Mostafa Saied

Abstract

This paper addresses the steady-state and transient analysis of bridge rectifiers. It starts withsuggesting an efficient representation of the diodes. A single equation that describes thediode’s performance in both the forward and reverse directions is presented. It implicitlytakes the voltage polarity into account. Without any loss of generality, the suggested method isapplied to the classical uncontrolled four-valve full-wave rectifier bridge configureuration.The effect of the load resistance and the eventual presence of a smoothing shunt-capacitor aswell as the waveform of the supply voltage are illustrated. The approach can handle casesinvolving non-sinusoidal sources and possible non-linear elements in the rectifier circuit. Theresults of a Mathematica code include the currents and voltages of all circuit elements. Thesuggested procedure is validated by comparing the solution of two case studies with thecorresponding results available in the literature.Keywords: Analytical models, bridge, diodes, Mathematica, power electronics, rectifiercircuits, single-phase, stead-state, transient analysis, valve stresses
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