A NUMERICAL-CALCULATION OF OPEN BOUNDARY-PROBLEM BY APPLYING THE FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD AND BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD ALTERNATELY

The finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM), which have entirely different characteristics, are standard methods f or the numerical analysis of physical phenomena described by partial d ifferential equations. The FEM is suitable for the analysis of a compl icated region that includes nonlinear materials, whereas the BEM is na turally effective for analyzing a very large region with Linear charac teristics. Therefore, considering the advantages in both methods, a no vel algorithm for the alternate application of the FEM and the BEM to magnetic field problems with the open boundary is presented. This appr oach avoids the disadvantages of the typical numerical methods with th e open boundary problem such as a great number of unknown values for t he FEM and nonsymmetric matrix for the hybrid FE-BE method. The soluti on of the overall problems is obtained by iterative calculations accom panied with the new acceleration method. (C) 1997 American Institute o f Physics.