A Spline-Based Partial Element Equivalent Circuit Method for Electrostatics

This contribution investigates the connection between isogeometric analysis (IgA) and the partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) method for electrostatic problems. We demonstrate that using the spline-based geometry concepts from IgA allows for extracting circuit elements without an explicit meshing step. Moreover, the proposed IgA–PEEC method converges for complex geometries up to three times faster than the conventional PEEC approach and, in turn, it requires a significantly lower number of degrees of freedom to solve a problem with comparable accuracy. The resulting method is closely related to the isogeometric boundary element method. However, it uses lowest-order basis functions to allow for straightforward physical and circuit interpretations. The findings are validated by an analytical example with complex geometry, that is, significant curvature, and by a realistic model of a surge arrester.