THE COUPLING OF THE BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD AND THE FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD FOR THE SOLUTION OF 3-DIMENSIONAL ELECTROMAGNETIC PROBLEMS ON INFINITE DOMAINS

Contents: If 3-dimensional electromagnetic problems are solved by finite elements, the computation of the fields for problems involving infinite space causes difficulties. To treat such problems either infinite elements [1] or so called 'ballooning elements' [2] can be used. Another possibility is the coupling of finite elements and boundary elements. In this article the calculation of electrostatic and magnetostatic fields in infinite space is presented, utilizing coupled elements. The problems are formulated in terms of potentials. In the electrostatic case the scalar potential phi and in the magnetostatic case the vector potential A is used. To investigate the capability of the coupled elements, among other things two examples have been calculated and compared to their solutions gained with the help of Biot-Savart's law.