A NUMERICAL SCHEME FOR THE ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE IN THIN CONDUCTORS OF ARBITRARY PLANAR SHAPE

A calculation of the electromagnetic response of a thin conductor in t he presence of an exciting primary magnetic field has been attempted b y various authors. Analytic solutions are obtainable when either the c onductor is of infinite extent or when the problem possesses some symm etry. The loss of symmetry makes the problem difficult to solve except for the simplest shape - that of a circular conductor. A numerical me thod has been used for the rectangular conductor by other authors. In this paper we consider the response due to a thin plane conductor of a rbitrary shape. The method involves the numerical generation of a set of body-fitted orthogonal curvilinear coordinates which maps the condu ctor onto a unit square. Good orthogonal grids can be generated for sh apes that do not deviate too far from the rectangular. In terms of the se curvilinear coordinates the vector potential for the area current d ensity satisfies an integro-differential equation which is solved nume rically.