A hybrid FEM/MOM formulation for nonlinear electromagnetic analysis

A hybrid method for nonlinear electromagnetic analysis that combines the Method of Moments (MOM) and the Finite Element Method (FEM) is presented. By using the equivalence principle, an interior and an exterior problem are used to study the actual problem. The MOM is used for the solution of the exterior problem where equivalent surface currents replace the solid bodies and generate the fields in the free space. The FEM is used to solve the interior problem defined into the solid bodies with given conditions at their boundaries. Considering that the actual fields are given by the sum of the fields in the two problems, a nonlinear matrix equation for the problem solution is obtained by forcing the continuity of the actual tangential electric and magnetic fields on the boundary of the nonlinear solid bodies. Two-dimensional numerical results are used to show the characteristics of the method by the analysis of test cases and by comparison with other numerical methods.