Electronics Simulations #14| AC to DC converter illustration using Caneda

What Will I Learn?

In this tutorial, reader:

• will learn the basics of AC to DC converters
• will learn how to construct AC to DC converter in Caneda
• will observe the response of AC to DC converter circuit

Requirements

To complete the tutorial, readers would have:

• basic knowledge about circuit design
• basic knowledge about Caneda software

Difficulty

• Basic

Tutorial Contents

In this tutorials, I am going to construct AC to DC converter circuit by using circuit simulator software which is called "Caneda". I will start with the giving information about the circuit and working principle, then move into construction steps and as a last step I will investigate simulation results on the software.

- Episode 1: What is AC to DC converter and how does it work?

AC to DC converter circuit simply converts an AC voltage source into DC voltage source by a very simple logic. In reality, we are using this circuit in every houses. In cities electricity is sending and receiving by AC sources since it is much more easier compared to DC, and we need DC sources to use tools in our houses. So without this circuitry, the life would be much more harder. Working principle as follows:

As a first step we use a full wave rectifier circuit to make our signal positive in all regions. (Construction and observation of full wave rectifier is done in my previous tutorial). After a full wave rectifier, we use a simple ripple circuit to make the signal as DC source. Ripple circuit basically works as a charging and discharging RC circuit whose time constant is too high so that signal does not reach zero, instead only small amount of change is observed.

Overall circuit for AC to DC converter should be like:

_{Source of the circuit}

And expected result should look like:

_{Source of the circuit}

With ripple with would have DC source, without ripple, we expect a sinusoidal as in the graph.

- Episode 2: Construction of the circuit in software

Constructed circuit on the software should look like:

I have skipped the basics of the construction steps, since I have explained from my previous tutorial.

As we can see from the above, construction step is rather easy.

- Episode 3: Analysis of the circuit

We have constructed the circuit and all we need to do is just save it click simulation. (Please note that I have already added the type of simulation as Transient Simulation. )

Results should look like:

Red corresponds to output of ripple circuit.

Cyan corresponds to input of the circuit.

When we increase R and C values, the result is:

As we can see, output seems like DC as we increase time constant(time constant= CxR.)

I have provided the files for this tutorial here. I highly recommend that the reader should work on the files that I have provided and try to understand the basics of the circuit & software. It will be benefical for he/she.

This is the end for this tutorial.Hope that you like it.

Caneda software is really user-friendly & effective for the one who wants to make simulation. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me on Discord (Escorn#4114)

Sources

Source for the circuit & graph

Curriculum

I have provided the previous tutorials that I have prepared for the community:

SimulIDE	Caneda
Part 1	Part 1
Part 2	Part 2
Part 3	Part 3
Part 4	Part 4
-	Part 5
-	Part 6
-	Part 7
-	Part 8

---

Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

---