A Unified Circuit View of Multiphysics Finite Element Analysis via Discrete Exterior Calculus Part I: 2D Static Fields

Topology optimization has received increasing attention in power engineering. Implementing it requires designers to have a good understanding of finite element analysis (FEA) at the assembling level. However, different physical processes in engineering systems are described with languages often only comprehensible by engineers in respective disciplines, not even to mention the implementation of FEA. This paper is bridging the gaps between multiphysics in FEA formulations through a unified circuit view. This unification is systematically done via a mathematical tool named discrete exterior calculus. It will not help with the FEA computationally, rather it will give the designers an intuitive and unified perspective about the multiphysics in engineering systems and potentially lead to novel multiphysics design approaches. This paper is a multi-part effort. Part I presented here will focus on 2D static fields.