Automated Netlist Generation for 3D Electrothermal and Electromagnetic Field Problems

TL;DR

This paper introduces an automated method for generating netlists from 3D electrothermal and electromagnetic field problems, enabling efficient simulation using standard circuit tools and facilitating field-circuit coupling.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach that automatically converts 3D field problems into circuit netlists using structured grids and finite integration, simplifying complex simulations.

Findings

Validated approach with numerical examples

Circuit simulation results match reference solutions

Enables field-circuit coupled simulations

Abstract

We present a method for the automatic generation of netlists describing general three-dimensional electrothermal and electromagnetic field problems. Using a pair of structured orthogonal grids as spatial discretisation, a one-to-one correspondence between grid objects and circuit elements is obtained by employing the finite integration technique. The resulting circuit can then be solved with any standard available circuit simulator, alleviating the need for the implementation of a custom time integrator. Additionally, the approach straightforwardly allows for field-circuit coupling simulations by appropriately stamping the circuit description of lumped devices. As the computational domain in wave propagation problems must be finite, stamps representing absorbing boundary conditions are developed as well. Representative numerical examples are used to validate the approach. The results obtained by circuit simulation on the generated netlists are compared with appropriate reference solutions.