Hybrid FEM/IPDG semi-implicit schemes for time domain electromagnetic wave propagation in non-cylindrical coaxial cables

In this work, we develop an efficient numerical method for solving 3D Maxwell’s equations in non-cylindrical coaxial cables. The main challenge arises from the elongated geometry of the computational domain, which induces strong anisotropy between the longitudinal direction (along the cable) and the transverse directions (within the cross-sections). This leads to the use of highly anisotropic meshes, where the longitudinal mesh size is much larger than the transverse one. Our objective is to design a numerical scheme that is explicit in the longitudinal direction, with a CFL stability condition depending only on the longitudinal mesh size. In a previous work, we achieved this for cylindrical cables by employing prismatic edge elements, 1D quadrature for longitudinal mass lumping, and a hybrid explicit/implicit time discretization. The present paper extends this approach to non-cylindrical cables, addressing several new difficulties with the following key ingredients: (1) representing the cable as a deformation of a reference cylindrical cable and employing mapping techniques between the physical and reference domains; (2) using an anisotropic space discretization that combines an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (IPDG) method in the transverse directions with a conforming finite element method in the longitudinal direction; (3) utilizing prismatic edge elements on a prismatic mesh of the reference cable; and (4) adapting the construction of the hybrid explicit–implicit time discretization to the new structure of the semi-discrete problem. From a theoretical perspective, the main difficulty lies in the stability analysis, which requires extending and adapting standard techniques for discontinuous Galerkin methods in space and energy methods in time.