Smoothing Capacitor Calculator

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This tool calculates the capacitor value for a full-wave bridge rectifier. The capacitor is used to smooth the output voltage to a specified ripple.

Formula

C = ILOAD/(f*VRipple)

where,

  • ILOAD is the load current
  • f is the frequency
  • VRipple is the peak-to-peak voltage ripple
By Krishnavedala – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Example Calculation

For a load current of 1 Amp, 60 Hz frequency and Ripple Voltage of 1 Volt the required capacitor is 16.7 mF. To reduce the voltage ripple down to 0.5 V requires twice the capacitor or 33.3 mF.