THE FINITE-ELEMENT SOLUTIONS FOR MOVING CONDUCTOR EDDY-CURRENT PROBLEMS BASED ON TRIANGULAR ELEMENTS

This paper describes an examination of the performance of the upwindin g formulations for triangular elements in comparison with that based o n quadrilateral elements. A novel form of weighting function for trian gular elements based on the elimination of the factors which could cau se numerical instability, is then introduced. The correct expressions for the upwinding method have been re-derived and results with accepta ble accuracy for a typical 2D example problem are obtained, although t hey are not as good as for quadrilateral elements. Improvements in ter ms of accuracy are found for the proposed new method over the upwindin g. In addition to improved accuracy, the avoidance of calculating the troublesome vector damping factors in the case of upwinding also makes time implementation of this new method easier and provides a potentia l alternative to upwinding.