What difference does it make to an appliance whether the supply is sinusoidal, or any other shape?
Many factors are associated with supply waveform like power and heat generation,charge accumulation, effective time period etc.A circuit is mostly designed keeping in mind, a type of input signal. Changes in those parameters may make circuit behave abnormally and thus sending it into an undefined state and even causing damages.

Let us understand with some examples:-



1 . In AC motor feeding a sawtooth or square waveform wont help since the magnetic field will be discontinuous with time.Also suppose you switched on a DC motor with sawtooth waveform, which usually needs PWM(consider a duty cycle of 40%) in rectangular waveform, results will be disappointing.



2 . If you are able to operate this device with different basic waveforms then please let me know!!!





3 . A simple LED circuit



At square waveform your led will glow forever (Vmax=100V,Vmin=0V,R2=R1=1K,C1=1u) however with sinusoidal waveform its hard to imagine the previous result.