A FINITE-DIFFERENCE TIME-DOMAIN SIMULATION OF POWER-DENSITY DISTRIBUTION IN A DIELECTRIC-LOADED MICROWAVE CAVITY

Microwave cavity heating, drying and cooking is finding use in a varie ty of industrial and domestic applications. In order to gain insight i nto the phenomena that occur inside the microwave cavity, a detailed k nowledge of electric and magnetic fields together with a prediction of the power distribution in the dielectric material is necessary. In th is paper, a three-dimensional finite difference time domain method is employed to analyze the field in a partially loaded rectangular cavity excited from a rectangular waveguide operating in the dominant TE10 m ode. Based on this method a computer algorithm for calculating the pow er distribution inside a lossy material in the cavity is developed. Th is algorithm is tested against a Field Matching Method algorithm for t he case of a simply (slab) loaded cavity.