Simulating a basic bridge-rectifier circuit

Question

I went through this SE post before asking my question:

How do you design a bridge rectifier circuit?

I have been continuously trying to simulate bridge-rectifier circuit in KiCAD and have kept failing. I have added GND reference for simulator (ngspice) in my circuit

Figure 1. KiCAD Schematic with Ground

Figure 2. Simulation results

I tried this in ngspice as well. Here is my bridge_rectifier.cir

* this is a bridge rectifier
V1 a 0 sin(0 5 1k)
.model DMOD D (IS=65.4p RS=42.2m BV=1.00k IBV=5.00u
+ CJO=14.8p  M=0.333 N=1.36 TT=2.88u)
D1 a b DMOD
D2 b c DMOD
D3 c 0 DMOD
D4 a 0 DMOD
R1 b 0 1k
.tran 5u 5m
.control
run
plot v(a) v(b) 
.endc
.end

Figure 3. Output

I don't seem to be getting, this expected output.

Figure 4. Expected output

I tried using Multisim, but the online version is too limited and allows for only 5 components in a circuit.

Hoping to learn more about the grounding concept.

Answer 1

Despite it's many and serious limitations, even the CircuitLab simulator that's linked here on EE.SE, seems adequate to simulate a full-wave bridge reasonably well. The following schematic:

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

...produces the following simulation output:

If you're going to do much, you'll certainly want something better--but for a task this simple, it's reasonably adequate.

Bottom line: even though it's not particularly good, you're setting a really low bar here.

Answer 2

There is nothing wrong with the simulation. Here are the same results for LTSpice (notice the differential measurement, \$V_{in}-V_{low}\$):

If you just increase the amplitude of the input signal to a much larger value than the diodes forward voltages:

With the lower voltage amplitude, the diodes barely conduct at the maximum and minimum values of the input voltage. It is like each conducting diode was a large resistor at these points, so the input voltage, without the differential measurement, is approximately half the maximum and minimum voltage values (due to 0V reference at the load).

Answer 3

This is what your spice describes - you can see that the voltage source is not connected correctly and does not match your KiCAD schematic:

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}