Electromagnetic fields due to moving sea water by finite element calculation

The purpose of this work is to quantify the electromagnetic perturbation induced by a conductor subjected to a velocity field in the Earth's magnetic field, by using the finite element software FLUX-EXPERT. The resolution variables are chosen in order to reduce the number of unknowns and to improve the precision. Because of the possible orientations of the different fields the problem is a three-dimensional one. If a frame related to the perturbation is defined, one can get rid of the temporal dependence in the Maxwell equations. Because the authors' problems are linear, a general problem is reconstructed by a linear combination of three elementary ones. The comparison of the results with analytical solutions obtained from simplified models confirm their validity. So the authors can study phenomena for which no easy analytical solution exists.<>