An Unconditional Stable Meshless ADI-RPIM for Simulation of Coupled Transient Electrothermal Problems

Abstract

Joule heat losses of electronics components may change behaviors of electrical and electronic devices, especially for semiconductor components whose electrical parameters are temperature-dependent. In this paper, a meshless approach based on radial point interpolation method (RPIM) is developed to numerically simulate the coupled electrical–thermal process that consists of electric potential equations and time-domain heat transfer equations in two dimensions. The RPIM can handle multiscale structures well with their nonuniform node placements. Furthermore, an alternating-direction-implicit technique is introduced to resolve the numerical stability issue of time-domain simulation of the multiscale electrothermal coupled problems. Detailed formulations are derived, and a fictitious point method is developed to handle the Neumann boundary condition pertaining to electric potential problems and the Robin condition pertaining to multiphysics problems. The efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed RPIM are verified through simulation of thin-film resistors. In comparisons with the existing methods, computational speed up of at least ten times is achieved.