5 July 2019

Advantages and disadvantages of TRIAC

A TRIAC stand for is a bidirectional thyristor with three terminals device. Thyristor used extensively used for the control of power in the AC circuit. Here this post gives information about the advantages and disadvantages of TRIAC to better understand this topic.


Advantages of Triac:
  • The Triac need a single fuse for protection
  • When the voltage is reduced to zero the TRIAC device is generally turned off
  • It needs only a single heat sink of a slightly larger size whereas for SCR two heat sinks should be required of smaller size
  • A safe breakdown in either direction is possible  using TRIAC but for SCR protection should be given with parallel diode
  • It can be triggered with positive or negative polarities of gate pulses
Disadvantages of Triac:
  • It has a very high switching delay
  • This is not suitable for DC application
  • It can be triggered in any direction so we need to be careful about triggering circuit
  • As compare to SCR it has a low rating
  • The TRIAC is not much reliable as compared to SCR
  • The dv/dt rating is very low as compared to SCR device
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