A new hybrid method using hinged finite element formulations for the skin effect eddy current problems

The authors describe a coupled FE-BE (finite element-boundary element) method to solve shallow-penetration-depth eddy current problems. A hinged quadrilateral FE developed specifically for the skin-effect problem is used in the conductor region, and the conventional BE is employed in the external region. The two formulations are coupled on the conductor surface and combined with an additional condition obtained from the total current conservation equation. The results of the test examples show that the technique is efficient for strong skin-effect problems. The numerical results in the test examples are largely acceptable compared with the exact analytical solution for ratios of conductor dimension to penetration depth in excess of 40