Nonlinear impedance boundary condition for 2D BEM

Purpose Derivation and efficient implementation of surface impedance boundary conditions (SIBCs) for nonlinear magnetic conductors. Design/methodology/approach An approach based on perturbation theory is proposed, which expands to nonlinear problems the methods already developed by the authors for linear problems. Differently from the linear case, for which the analytical solution of the diffusion equation in the semi-infinite space for the magnetic field is available, in the nonlinear case the corresponding nonlinear diffusion equation must be solved numerically. To this aim, a suitable smooth map is defined in order to reduce the semi-infinite computational domain to a finite one; then the diffusion equation is solved by a Galerkin method relying on basis functions constructed via the push-forward of a Lagrangian polynomial basis whose degrees of freedom are collocated at Gauß-Lobatto nodes. The use of such basis in connection with a suitable under-integration naturally leads to mass-lumping without impacting the order of the method. The solution of the diffusion equation is coupled with a BEM formulation for the case of parallel magnetic conductors in terms of E and B fields. Findings The results are validated by comparison to full nonlinear FEM simulations showing very good accordance at a much lower computational cost. Research limitations/implications Limitations of the method are those arising from perturbation theory: the introduced small parameter must be much less than one. This implies that the penetration depth of the magnetic field into the magnetic and conductive media must be much smaller than the characteristic size of the conductor. Originality/value The efficient implementation of a nonlinear surface impedance boundary condition based on a perturbation approach is proposed for an electric and magnetic field formulation of the two dimensional problem of current driven parallel solid conductors.