Electric circuit element boundary conditions in the finite element method for full-wave passive electromagnetic devices

Abstract

A natural coupling of a circuit with an electromagnetic device is possible if special boundary conditions, called Electric Circuit Element (ECE), are used for the electromagnetic field formulation. This contribution shows how these ECE boundary conditions can be implemented into the 3D-finite element method for solving coupled full-wave electromagnetic (EM) field-circuit problems in the frequency domain. The frequency response allows the extraction of a reduced order model of the analyzed device, accounting for all the EM field effects. The implementation is based on a weak formulation that uses the electric field strength E strictly inside the domain and a scalar potential V defined solely at the boundary. Edge elements for E are used inside the three-dimensional domain and nodal elements for V are used on its two-dimensional boundary. The weak formulation is described and implemented in the free environment Open Numerical Engineering LABoratory (onelab). The validation is carried out on 3D examples.