The volume integral equation method in magnetostatic problem

Abstract

This article addresses the issues of volume integral equation method application to magnetic system calculations. The main advantage of this approach is that in this case finding the solution of equations is reduced to the area filled with ferromagnetic. The difficulty of applying the method is connected with kernel singularity of integral equations. For this reason in collocation method only piecewise constant approximation of unknown variables is used within the limits of fragmentation elements inside the famous package GFUN3D. As an alternative approach the points of observation can be replaced by integration over fragmentation element, which allows to use approximation of unknown variables of a higher order.In the presented work the main aspects of applying this approach to magnetic systems modelling are discussed on the example of linear approximation of unknown variables: discretisation of initial equations, decomposition of the calculation area to elements, calculation of discretised system matrix elements, solving the resulting nonlinear equation system. In the framework of finite element method the calculation area is divided into a set of tetrahedrons. At the beginning the initial area is approximated by a combination of macro-blocks with a previously constructed two-dimensional mesh at their borders. After that for each macro-block separately the procedure of tetrahedron mesh construction is performed. While calculating matrix elements sixfold integrals over two tetrahedra are reduced to a combination of fourfold integrals over triangles, which are calculated using cubature formulas. Reduction of singular integrals to the combination of the regular integrals is proposed with the methods based on the concept of homogeneous functions. Simple iteration methods are used to solve non-linear discretized systems, allowing to avoid reversing large-scale matrixes. The results of the modelling are compared with the calculations obtained using other methods.