Reconstruction of transient currents from magnetic data

Purpose – To provide a time domain formulation for reconstruction of transient currents flowing in massive parallel conductors from magnetic data collected in the dielectric space surrounding the conductors. Design/methodology/approach – A boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation involving Mitzner’s and Rytov’s high order surface impedance boundary conditions (SIBCs) is used. Input data of the inverse problem are the magnetic fields at given locations near the conductors. In order to validate the inversion algorithm, the magnetic field data are computed solving the direct problem with FEM for given current waveforms. Findings – The improvement in reconstruction accuracy of the new time domain BIE formulation employing high order SIBCs has been demonstrated numerically in a simple test case. The range of validity of the technique has been extended to current pulses of longer duration and the computational burden has shown to increase only by a factor of 4.