Institute of Mathematical Methods in Engineering U NIVERSIT ÄT

Numerical Analysis and Geometric Design S TUTTGART

Seminar at 11:00 on Friday, December 12

Title Finite Element Method with B-splines for Electromagnetics

Speaker Gökhan Apaydin (gapaydin@hsz-t.ch)

Affiliation Applied Research and Development

University of Technology Zürich
Technoparkstrasse 1, Zürich 8005-CH

Abstract

The solution of partial differential equations is necessary in a wide variety of engineer-

ing applications in electromagnetics. They are usually solved by using either analytical
or numerical methods. Analytical methods are however suitable for simple geometries.
Hence, the numerical methods are required in most practical engineering applications
with complex boundary conditions. Finite Element Method (FEM) is one of the popular
numerical methods when studying the complex geometries and arbitrary boundaries
with inhomogeneous media. However, mesh generation causes consumption in com-
putation time for higher dimensions.

Due to their flexibility and continuity between the points, b-splines can be considered
as basis functions instead of Lagrange functions which are generally used as shape
functions for FEM analysis. Consequently, more accurate results can be obtained by
using b-spline basis functions as shape functions in order to solve electromagnetic
field problems for rectangular regions and using higher order b-splines is simple to
implement for the approximation of FEM applications.

However, there have been some restrictions for arbitrary domain. The boundary con-
ditions have not been modeled easily. The basis functions should vanish outside the
domain; and if homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition is taken into consideration,
the function must be zero on the domain. Secondly, some b-splines, which are near the
boundary, have a little effect and this causes instability for the approximation. Web-
splines overcome these problems. For the Dirichlet boundary conditions, the weight
functions are used. For the instability problem, the extended b-splines are considered.

In this research, the cutoff wave numbers of waveguides have been studied and the
error analysis of using web-splines has been shown. Later; it has been applied to
show the scalar potential and the electromagnetic field distributions of various modes
of rectangular, circular, and coaxial waveguides which have been studied in literature.
The results show the suitability of the proposed method. Then, the implementations for
waveguides of arbitrary domain have been illustrated. The cutoff wave number analysis
for arbitrary domain has been studied and compared with the standard FEM method.
More accurate results have been obtained by using fewer nodes.

1
 Institute of Mathematical Methods in Engineering U NIVERSIT ÄT
Numerical Analysis and Geometric Design S TUTTGART

The standard (•), extended inner (N) and outer (•) cubic b-splines

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to EM Computation

2. Finite Element Method for EM

3. Finite Element Method with b-splines

4. EM Applications

• Reflection from dielectric slab

• EM waves between parallel plates
• Wave equation analysis
• Waveguide applications

5. Conclusions

• Advantages, disadvantages of web-splines

• Efficient frequency range with web-splines
• Future studies