Calculation of strongly coupled thermal and electromagnetic fields in pulse-loaded devices

In most applications, the coupling between thermal and electromagnetic fields can be assumed weak without loss of accuracy due to the differences between the time constants in order of magnitudes. But, especially for devices loaded with high electrical energy pulses, this may be no longer valid, since rapid temperature rises may influence electrical parameters much stronger. In such cases, stationary solutions are not sufficient and the transients have to be calculated. Therefore, we developed a numerical code based on finite differences which uses a backward-differentiation formulae solver. Comparisons to usual time-integration schemes have shown a considerable speed-up for equal accuracies.