The external characteristic of a diode rectifier

The paper discusses the behaviour of a rectifier system consisting of a thermionic tube, output load, and smoothing condenser. An equation is derived relating the d.c. output current and output voltage, and this equation is verified experimentally. The dependence of the mean output voltage and ripple on the size of the reservoir condenser is discussed and examined experimentally. The efficiency of the rectifier is expressed as a function of the voltage-drop on load, and tables are given which show the power factor of the system and also the effective heating current in both windings of the supply transformer. The effect on the output voltage of the leakage inductance of the transformer is examined experimentally and discussed in general terms. It is shown that the resistance of the transformer is competent to increase appreciably the voltage-drop on load. Finally it is shown that the analysis is valid in the main for bi-phase half-wave rectification, including the cascade system used by J. D. Cockcroft.