Using Reduced Support to Enhance Parallel Strong Scalability in 3D Finite-Element Magnetic Vector Potential Formulations with Circuit Equations

Quasi-static electromagnetic problems involving, e.g., inductors, are often solved numerically using the finite-element method with magnetic vector and electric scalar potentials. Coupling the inductors to external circuits may however, lead, to large matrix equations that could become bottlenecks in parallel computation systems, particularly for strong scaling when more processors are introduced to scale down the total computation time. It is argued and shown by numerical simulations that the use of reduced support in the finite-element model improves the strong scalability of multiprocessor simulations due to the reduced communication between the global constraint owner processes and the finite-element equation owner processes.