NUMERICAL MODELLING BY THE TLM METHOD

Publisher Summary This chapter describes numerical modeling by the TLM method. A lumped electrical network provides a means of discretizing the space derivatives in partial differential equations. The idea is not new, and certainly the lumped network models for diffusion and wave phenomena are well known. They provide the intermediate step for transmission-line modeling. The lumped network may also be regarded as the exact electrical realization of a set of first-order ordinary differential equations obtained from the space discretization process. The network can, therefore, provide useful information about the properties of these ordinary differential equations. Simple differencing techniques lead to the approximation of partial differential equations by lumped networks. The continuous properties of the field space have been concentrated into discontinuous packets. The next step is to solve the lumped network in the time domain, and this is achieved by transmission-line modeling.