Search

A summation-by-parts simultaneous approximation term (SBP-SAT) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) subgridding method is proposed to model geometrically fine structures in this paper. Compared with our previous work, the proposed SBP-SAT FDTD method uses the staggered Yee's grid without adding or modifying any field components through field extrapolation on the boundaries to make the discrete operators satisfy the SBP property. The accuracy of extrapolation keeps consistency with that of the second-order finite-difference scheme near the boundaries. In addition, the SATs are used to weakly enforce the tangential boundary conditions between multiple mesh blocks with different mesh sizes. With carefully designed interpolation matrices and selected free parameters of the SATs, no dissipation occurs in the whole computational domain. Therefore, its long-time stability is theoretically guaranteed. Three numerical examples are carried out to validate its effectiveness. Results show that the proposed SBP-SAT FDTD subgridding method is stable, accurate, efficient, and easy to implement based on existing FDTD codes with only a few modifications., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2110.09054

To enhance the scalability and performance of the traditional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods, a three-dimensional summation-by-parts simultaneous approximation term (SBP-SAT) FDTD method is developed to solve complex electromagnetic problems. It is theoretically stable and can be further used for multiple mesh blocks with different mesh sizes. This paper mainly focuses on the fundamental theoretical aspects upon its three-dimensional implementation, the SAT for various boundary conditions, and the numerical dispersion properties and the comparison with the FDTD method. The proposed SBP-SAT FDTD method inherits all the merits of the FDTD method, which is matrix-free, easy to implement, and has the same level of accuracy with a negligible overhead of runtime (0.13\%) and memory usage (1.2\%). Four numerical examples are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

We proposed a provably stable FDTD subgridding method for accurate and efficient transient electromagnetic analysis. In the proposed method, several field components are properly added to the boundaries of Yee's grid to make sure that the discrete operators meet the summation-by-parts (SBP) property. Then, by incorporating the simultaneous approximation terms (SATs) into the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, the proposed FDTD subgridding method mimics the energy estimate of the continuous Maxwell's equations at the semi-discrete level to guarantee its stability. Further, to couple multiple mesh blocks with different mesh sizes, the interpolation matrices are also derived. The proposed FDTD subgridding method is accurate, efficient, easy to implement and be integrated into the existing FDTD codes with only simple modifications. At last, three numerical examples with fine structures are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The traditional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is constrained by the Courant-Friedrich-Levy (CFL) condition and suffers from the notorious staircase error in electromagnetic simulations. This paper proposes a three-dimensional conformal locally-one-dimensional FDTD (CLOD-FDTD) method to address the two issues for modeling perfectly electrical conducting (PEC) objects. By considering the partially filled cells, the proposed CLOD-FDTD method can significantly improve the accuracy compared with the traditional LOD-FDTD method and the FDTD method. At the same time, the proposed method preserves unconditional stability, which is analyzed and numerically validated using the Von-Neuman method. Significant gains in Central Processing Unit (CPU) time are achieved by using large time steps without sacrificing accuracy. Two numerical examples include a PEC cylinder and a missile are used to verify its accuracy and efficiency with different meshes and time steps. It can be found from these examples, the CLOD-FDTD method show better accuracy and can improve the efficiency compared with those of the traditional FDTD method and the traditional LOD-FDTD method.

It is widely thought that small time steps lead to small numerical errors in the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. In this paper, we investigated how time steps impact on numerical dispersion of two FDTD methods including the FDTD(2,2) method and the FDTD(2,4) method. Through rigorously analytical and numerical analysis, it is found that small time steps of the FDTD methods do not always have small numerical errors. Our findings reveal that these two FDTD methods present different behaviors with respect to time steps: (1) for the FDTD(2,2) method, smaller time steps limited by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition increase numerical dispersion and lead to larger simulation errors; (2) for the FDTD(2,4) method, as time step increases, numerical dispersion errors first decrease and then increase. Our findings are also comprehensively validated from one- to three-dimensional cases through several numerical examples including wave propagation, resonant frequencies of cavities and a practical electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) problem.