Stationary electro-thermal coupling analysis considering dual finite element formulations of steady current field

The interaction between steady current field and thermal field occurs in various engineering applications. The fields are mutually two-way coupled due to the heat generated by electric current and temperature-dependent resistivity. It is a computational challenge to analyse such multiphysics problems when the geometric structures are complex. One possibility for reducing the computational costs is to acquire relatively accurate solutions with less unknowns that results from coarser mesh. This paper utilizes the complementarity of dual finite element formulations of steady current field to accelerate convergence of the coupling analysis. The performance and convergence are demonstrated with a micro-resistor beam benchmark problem.