Hybrid Simulation of Electromagnetic Field Interaction with Metallic Structures Showing Massive Nonlinear Loading

The proposed project aims to contribute scientifically at the intersection of three different research areas: (1) the physics of electromagnetic field interaction with nonlinearly loaded, electrically large structures and surfaces, (2) novel engineering applications for such structures and surfaces, and (3) efficient and stable numerical modeling and simulation of such structures and surfaces. The massive loading of metallic structures, i.e. the connection of several hundreds of nonlinear loads over an electrically large area, has been of high interest in the recent past and poses new challenges and opportunities for fundamental research. Examples and applications that are foreseen or already looked at for these kind of structures and surfaces include energy-selective shielding, waveform-dependent absorption, self-focusing of surface waves, RF limiters, subwavelength imaging, nonlinear radar and switching, and time-domain windowing among others. Due to this high interest it is very likely that there will be an increasing demand for efficient and validated numerical methods for design and optimization of nonlinearly loaded structures and surfaces in the near future. Based on previous work of the groups of Prof. Schuster at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and the group of Prof. Grivet-Talocia at Politecnico di Torino (POLITO) it is proposed to generate a novel hybrid simulation technique addressing this need. The technique will use the integral equation based Method of Moments (MoM) for characterization of the linear part (i.e. the metallic structures and surfaces) of the problem and a combination of Model Order Reduction (MOR) and Waveform Relaxation (WR) for dealing with the complete system including many nonlinear loads. The research challenge lies in the suitable combination and adaption of these well-known methods (MoM, MOR, WR) for meeting the demands on accuracy, stability, and efficiency of the numerical simulation of massively nonlinearly loaded (i.e. 1000 and more nonlinear loads), electrically large structures and surfaces.

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