Comparison between the wave finite element and shift cell operator method for calculating dispersion diagrams of periodic metamaterial structures

In this paper, the accuracy of two popular finite element based methods for calculating dispersion diagrams of periodic metamaterials is compared. The study reveals that the wave finite element method (WFEM) tends to result in higher accuracy for more coarsely meshed models as compared to the shift cell operator method (SCOM) and that care should be taken when using the SCOM for accurate stop band predictions using dispersion diagrams.