An adaptive hybrid grids finite-element approach for plane wave three-dimensional electromagnetic modeling

In unstructured finite element (FE) plane wave electromagnetic modeling, the goal-oriented mesh adaptive method based on posterior errors is often used to optimize the mesh to a state where a high-precision numerical solution can be obtained with fewer elements. However, for high-frequency data, this method tends to generate a large number of small elements in the shallow near-surface area, which increases the computational burden of FE solution. To solve this problem, we developed an improved goal-oriented hybrid mesh adaptive method. This method realizes the coupling of prismatic elements and tetrahedral elements in FE analysis and can establish FE system equations without suspension nodes. Numerical example studies illustrate how the proposed method uses triangular prism elements to divide the near-surface area and greatly improves the computational efficiency of plane wave electromagnetic modeling. For high-frequency modeling, the proposed hybrid grid reduces the number of required elements, improves the numerical accuracy, reduces the iterations of adaptive grids refinement, and improves the efficiency of the adaptive numerical solution. For low-frequency forward calculations, the hybrid grid maintains the same solution efficiency as traditional adaptive numerical simulation based on pure tetrahedrons.