A novel high order time domain vector finite element method for the simulation of electromagnetic devices.

摘要

The goal of this dissertation is twofold. The first part concerns the development of a numerical method for solving Maxwell's equations on unstructured hexahedral grids that employs both high order spatial and high order temporal discretizations. The second part involves the use of this method as a computational tool to perform high fidelity simulations of various electromagnetic devices such as optical transmission lines and photonic crystal structures to yield a level of accuracy that has previously been computationally cost prohibitive. This work is based on the initial research of Daniel White who developed a provably stable, charge and energy conserving method for solving Maxwell's equations in the time domain that is second order accurate in both space and time. The research presented here has involved the generalization of this procedure to higher order methods. High order methods are capable of yielding far more accurate numerical results for certain problems when compared to corresponding h-refined first order methods, and often times at a significant reduction in total computational cost. The first half of this dissertation presents the method as well as the necessary mathematics required for its derivation. The second half addresses the implementation of the method in a parallel computational environment, its validation using benchmark problems, and finally its use in large scale numerical simulations of electromagnetic transmission devices.