Unstructured–PEEC Method for Thin Electromagnetic Media

In this article, an unstructured-partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method for modeling electromagnetic thin regions is proposed. Two coupled circuits' representations are used for solving both electric and/or magnetic effects in thin regions discretized by a finite-element surface mesh. Dynamic effects across the thickness of the sheet are modeled by equivalent complex conductivity and reluctivity. Nonsimply connected regions are treated with fundamental branch independent loop matrices coming from the circuit representation. The formulation enables the computation of eddy current losses and can be coupled with external circuits, PEEC cables or coils, thanks to the circuit representation.

I. Introduction

The electromagnetic modeling of both magnetic and conductive sheets is an important engineering problem frequently encountered in many applications such as the design of shielding devices or planar conductors. The analysis of eddy current distributions is a complex challenge because of the high ratio between the sheet main dimensions and its thickness making the volume mesh of the active region very consuming in computing resources with, e.g., the finite-element method.