Adaptive transient simulation of field-circuit coupled problems including switching circuit elements

The coupling between a 3D modified magnetic vector potential formulation discretized by the Finite Integration Technique and an electrical circuit containing switching elements such as diodes is presented. The changes in the state of the switching elements (“conducting” or “blocking”) are introduced as changes in the topology of the circuit part of the model which results in a structural change of the differential-algebraic system of index 1 that describes the coupled field-circuit problem. The presented paper treats this topological aspect as well as the application of the classical and higherorder time integration methods, which allow for an elegant implementation of the adaptive timestepping procedure.