Hi again,
Oh that's great, will be interesting to find out how this turns out, and if you make any RMS, average, or temperature measurements (etc>) i hope you can post those too.
In the mean time, here is one of the more interesting views on the full wave rectifier with filter capacitor, with small inductance. We were just talking about this on another web site recently.
Note that here we can calculate the ACTUAL waveform of the diode current, so there's no problem in calculating the RMS current.
The idea is to first calculate angle A from knowing the peak voltage and the DC output voltage, then calculating angle B from knowing that the volt seconds charge is equal to the voltage seconds discharge. Knowing this, we can then calculate the exact inductor waveform (from angle A to angle B). This of course allows us to calculate the RMS current.
An example with L=0.001, Vdc=150v, Vpk=120*sqrt(2), and f=50Hz, we get 18.3 amps RMS. The average current is 10.7 amps. The ratio here then is 1.71 to 1.
If we add series resistance then we need to add that to the calculations, but without that we see the basic idea.
I can probably run a quick test myself too later this month, with lighter current levels. Unfortunately i dont think i have a sizable inductor around that would be suitable for this test, so probably have to limit it to just series resistance.