The Equipotential Method a Moving Finite Element Method for Electrostatic Field Calculations

Summary from only given, as follows. An energy based moving finite element method, the equipotential method (EPM), has been developed for electrostatic field calculations. This new method is based upon the minimization of the total potential energy with respect to the nodal positions of the discretization mesh, which corresponds to a group of equipotential surfaces of the calculated domain. The method has several significant advantages over conventional finite element method (FEM) for the calculations of some electric fields. Generally, with conventional finite element method the governing equation is solved for nodes with no specific physical meaning, while with the equipotential method the physical nature of the field (equipotential surfaces) is introduced into the solution process as early as possible and a group of equipotential surfaces are obtained as the solution. By having the ability to greatly improve the mesh from a given initial mesh an important possibility comes to bear in EPM, namely the initial meshes do not need to be very suitable. Therefore, a convenient approach for automatic generation of initial meshes can be employed which requests mainly the boundary information of the fields to be calculated, and no special knowledge about finite element method is required from EPM users to prepare the input data for the approach. By using EPM one can often solve electric field problems with much less trouble than by using conventional FEM. This equipotential method offers a promising new approach to the solution of electrostatic field problems.