An Efficient and Robust Mixed-Gauge Scheme Based on Current-Splitting for Nonlinear Magnetostatic Field Computation

In the edge element discretization for magnetostatic problems, a gauge scheme, such as tree gauge, Lagrangian multiplier (LM) gauge, and auto gauge, is usually adopted to handle the singular curl-curl equation in terms of the magnetic vector potential. However, tree-gauge and LM-gauge schemes are not very efficient as a nonlinear problem with many increments has to be resolved. In order to overcome those difficulties, a mixed-gauge scheme based on current-splitting is proposed in this article. First, we make an improvement for LM-gauged formulation and adapt it to calculate the initial increment with a specially designed CG solver; then split the discrete source current density into a compatible part and incompatible part based on discrete Helmholtz decomposition; auto gauge cooperates with the compatible part to calculate the following increments. The mixed-gauge scheme combines the advantages of LM-gauge and auto-gauge schemes, which avoids the step to determine the source term, and at the same time, has high computational efficiency. The mixed-gauge scheme is tested in some examples against some other gauge schemes and found to be efficient and robust, where others possibly converge slowly or fail to produce a reliable solution.