Diode Clamper (Clippers) with Capacitors

[theuserman]

Hey all, I have a diode clamper (1 diode) and I had to use a capacitor in lab to smooth out the output (the input was a triangle wave - without the capacitor the output was still a bit triangular at the tips). This is just curiosity - can anyone explain to me how the capacitor managed to smooth out the output wave (the tops of the output wave were flat). I need to figure out how to post pictures on here :P

 

[theuserman]

Here's an image.

 

[MATLABdude]

Hey all, I have a diode clamper (1 diode) and I had to use a capacitor in lab to smooth out the output (the input was a triangle wave - without the capacitor the output was still a bit triangular at the tips). This is just curiosity - can anyone explain to me how the capacitor managed to smooth out the output wave (the tops of the output wave were flat). I need to figure out how to post pictures on here :P

If you've taken signal processing, the capacitor acts as a low-pass filter, filtering out the higher frequencies and thus reducing the "sharpness" of the triangle wave.

If you haven't, then remember that the voltage in a capacitor can't change instantaneously, and acts as a voltage "buffer", and smoothing out input waveforms.