FDTD-SPICE direct linking simulation of transient fields caused by electrostatic discharge

This paper presents FDTD-SPICE direct linking simulations of transient electromagnetic fields caused by electrostatic discharges (ESD) in general structures. Especially, the air-discharge ESD simulation is performed by simultaneously combining a full-wave model for structures of analytical objects and SPICE equivalent circuit models based on nonlinear spark resistance formulae. Unlike existing numerical methods, this approach has several advantages: accurate modelling of arbitrary structures, flexible treatment of various spark resistance equations such as Rompe-Weizel´s and Toepler´s formulae and no extraction of impedance for the full-wave model. The advantages of our approach are verified by means of several canonical ESD problems. The FDTD-SPICE direct linking simulation results are compared with those of an analytical approach and two numerical methods, and measurement data from a reference.