Arduino 220V Full Wave Controlled Bridge Rectifier

In the last project I made a half wave controlled rectifier using Arduino UNO board and one thyristor (also called SCR).
This topic shows how to build a full wave controlled bridge rectifier using Arduino uno, 2 thyristors and 2 diodes (semi-converter).
A rectifier is just an AC to DC converter.
No warranty is provided with this project, do it at your own risk!
AC: Alternating Current.
DC: Direct Current.
SCR: Silicon Controlled Rectifier.

Last project link is below:
220V Half Wave Controlled Rectifier with Arduino

The figure below shows a general schematic diagram of half-controlled bridge rectifier (semiconverter), which uses two thyristors and two diodes:

half-controlled bridge rectifier

220 V Full wave controlled bridge rectifier with Arduino circuit:
A detailed circuit diagram of the project is shown below.

Arduino 220V full wave controlled rectifier circuit scr thyristor

All the grounded terminals are connected together.

The input voltage of the circuit is 220/230 V 50Hz alternating current (AC) from home outlet (single phase). The phase (line) terminal is connected to thyristor T1 anode and diode D1 cathode, the natural is connected to thyristor T2 anode and D2 cathode.
The load can be purely resistive (for example lamp) or inductive (motor).
I’ve used a simple lamp with 40W (purely resistive load).

In this project I used TYN1225 thyristor (datasheet) for T1 and T2. The two diodes D1 and D2 may be 1N4007 or equivalent.

The two transformers TR1 and TR2 are pulse transformers which are used for triggering the 2 thyristors T1 and T2. TR1 and TR2 are identical, their full name is: KMB472/101 (KMB472-101) from YHDC (datasheet).
The KMB472-101 transformer works with voltage of 8V, so to get 8V I used LM7808 voltage regulator. The LM7808 gives a regulated 8V from an external power source of 12V.
Each KMB472-101 transformer is connected to the LM7808 regulator output (8V) through a resistor of 1 ohm.

The diodes D3, D4, D5 and D6 are simple diodes, each one may be 1N4007 or 1N4148.
The two transistors Q1 and Q2 are NPN type, each one can be KSC2383 (datasheet) or equivalent. I’m using the KSC2383 in my hardware circuit!
Q1 and Q2 base terminals are respectively connected to Arduino pin 9 and pin 10 through 1k ohm resistor.

In this project I used the LM393 (dual comparator IC) for the zero crossing events detection, an optocoupler can be used for the same purpose but I think the comparator is much better because it gives an exact results of the zero-crossing events. The two diodes (1N4007) which are connected between the non-inverting input (+) and the inverting input (-) of the comparator are used to limit the voltage between those pins. The output of the LM393 (or LM339) is an open collector, so I added the 4.7k ohm resistor there (between +5V and arduino pin 2). Also the comparator chip is supplied with +5V that comes from the Arduino board.
The non-inverting input of the comparator is connected to the phase of the 220V source through four 220k ohm resistor (total of 880k).
The same thing for the inverting input which is connected to the natural through four series 220k resistors.

The firing angle alpha is controlled from the 10k ohm potentiometer (or variable resistor) where its output is connected to Arduino analog pin 0.

Arduino Half wave controlled rectifier code:
Hints:
The frequency of the AC current is 50Hz which means the period is equal to 20 milliseconds, a half wave is 10 milliseconds.
A zero degree firing angle alpha is represented by 0 ms, a 45° is 2.5 ms (2500 µs), a 90° is 5 ms (5000 µs) and 135° is 7.5ms (7500 µs). 180° is the full half wave width which is 10 ms (10000 µs).

For a 60Hz AC source, the period is 16.67ms and a half wave width is 8.33ms. So, a firing angle of 90° is represented by 4.167ms (4167µs).

The Arduino uno microcontroller (ATmega328P) has an ADC converter with 10-bit resolution, this means the digital output value may vary between 0 and 1023.
After reading from analog channel 0 the firing angle alpha is always between 0 and 9500 microseconds:

The output of the LM393 comparator is connected to Arduino digital pin 2 which is hardware external interrupt pin. Whenever there is a change of the state of that pin (from high to low or from low to high) it will interrupt the ATmega328P microcontroller which directly executes the function ZC_detect().
The interrupt is enabled using the following line:

The two thyristors T1 and T2 are fired using two PWM signals (pulse train) which is generated using Timer1 module on pin 9 (for T1) and pin 10 (for T2) with frequency of 3.9375 kHz.
The duty cycle is set to 50, so we get a pulse train of 50µs (required by the pulse transformer YHDC KMB472-101):

A PWM is generated only on Arduino pin 9 when: TCCR1A = 0x81 and when TCCR1A = 0x21 a PWM signal is enabled on pin 10 only. Pins 9 and 10 PWMs are OFF when TCCR1A = 0.

The zero crossing event decides which thyristor will be triggered, if the 220V input voltage is at the positive cycle the LM393 comparator outputs high (logic 1) which means thyristor T1 will be fired (after the delay of the firing angle), otherwise T2 will be fired.
So, if the variable ZC is equal to 1 a PWM signal is generated on pin 9 (TCCR1A = 0x81) and if ZC is equal to 2 a PWM signal is generated on pin 10 (TCCR1A = 0x21):

Full Arduino code:

The following images shows some waveform of the load voltage using source of 220VAC – 50Hz and a simple 40 watts lamp.
The first result is for a firing angle of 0 degree (0 µs):

Arduino full wave controlled rectifier alpha = 0

The second image is for alpha = 45° (2500 µs):

Arduino full wave controlled rectifier alpha = 45 degrees

This one is for alpha = 90° (5000µs):

Arduino full wave controlled rectifier alpha = 90 degrees

And the last result is for alpha = 135° (7500µs):

Arduino full wave controlled rectifier alpha = 135 degrees

The pictures below shows my simple protoboad circuit parts.
This one shows a complete circuit:

Arduino 220/230 V 50Hz full wave controlled rectifier hardware circuit

And this shows the bridge rectifier:

Single phase controlled bridge rectifier (semiconverter)

This shows the two pulse transformers:

KMB472-101 SCR trigger transformer circuit board

And the last picture shows zero crossing detection circuit:

220 V AC zero crossing detection circuit using LM393 comparator

Finally, the following video shows the control of a 40w lamp brightness using the controlled bridge rectifier:

Reference:
Power Electronics Handbook – MUHAMMAD H. RASHID

1 thought on “Arduino 220V Full Wave Controlled Bridge Rectifier”

  1. Dear sir,
    I was done this project the same as yours. but unfortunately is not working. I’m kindly requested please help me.
    thank you,
    Sanjaya.

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