Numerical method of mixed finite volume-modified upwind fractional step difference for three-dimensional semiconductor device transient behavior problems

Transient behavior of three-dimensional semiconductor device with heat conduction is described by a coupled mathematical system of four quasi-linear partial differential equations with initial-boundary value conditions. The electric potential is defined by an elliptic equation and it appears in the following three equations via the electric field intensity. The electron concentration and the hole concentration are determined by convection-dominated diffusion equations and the temperature is interpreted by a heat conduction equation. A mixed finite volume element approximation, keeping physical conservation law, is used to get numerical values of the electric potential and the accuracy is improved one order. Two concentrations and the heat conduction are computed by a fractional step method combined with second-order upwind differences. This method can overcome numerical oscillation, dispersion and decreases computational complexity. Then a three-dimensional problem is solved by computing three successive one-dimensional problems where the method of speedup is used and the computational work is greatly shortened. An optimal second-order error estimate in L² norm is derived by using prior estimate theory and other special techniques of partial differential equations. This type of mass-conservative parallel method is important and is most valuable in numerical analysis and application of semiconductor device.     

守恒型扩散方程非线性离散格式的性质分析和快速求解

对于守恒型扩散方程,研究其二阶时间精度非线性全隐有限差分离散格式的性质,证明了其解的存在唯一性.研究了二阶时间精度的Picard-Newton迭代格式,证明了迭代解对原问题真解的二阶时间和空间收敛性,以及对非线性离散解的二次收敛速度,实现了非线性问题的快速求解.本文中方法也适用于一阶时间精度格式的分析,并可推广至对流扩散问题.数值实验验证了二阶时间精度Picard-Newton迭代格式的高精度和高效率.     

Optimal error estimates and modified energy conservation identities of the ADI-FDTD scheme on staggered grids for 3D Maxwell’s equations

This paper is concerned with the optimal error estimates and energy conservation properties of the alternating direction implicit finite-difference time-domain(ADI-FDTD) method which is a popular scheme for solving the 3D Maxwell’s equations.Precisely,for the case with a perfectly electric conducting(PEC) boundary condition we establish the optimal second-order error estimates in both space and time in the discrete H 1-norm for the ADI-FDTD scheme,and prove the approximate divergence preserving property that if the divergence of the initial electric and magnetic fields are zero,then the discrete L 2-norm of the discrete divergence of the ADI-FDTD solution is approximately zero with the second-order accuracy in both space and time.The key ingredient is two new discrete modified energy norms which are second-order in time perturbations of two new energy conservation laws for the Maxwell’s equations introduced in this paper.Furthermore,we prove that,in addition to two known discrete modified energy identities which are second-order in time perturbations of two known energy conservation laws,the ADI-FDTD scheme also satisfies two new discrete modified energy identities which are second-order in time perturbations of the two new energy conservation laws.This means that the ADI-FDTD scheme is unconditionally stable under the four discrete modified energy norms.Experimental results which confirm the theoretical results are presented.     

Convergence of a multigrid cascadic algorithm for second-order finite elements in a domain with smooth boundary

A cascadic multigrid algorithm is substantiated for a grid problem obtained by discretization of a second-order elliptic equation with second-order finite elements on triangles. The efficiency of the algorithm is proved. In particular, it is shown that the number of arithmetic operations required to achieve the order of accuracy of an approximate solution equal to that of the discretization error depends linearly on the number of unknowns. The rate of convergence is found to be higher than one for linear finite elements despite achieving a higher order of accuracy.     

直立圆柱二阶波浪力解析解

大直径直立圆柱体上的二阶波浪力目前已有一些研究结果,但仍存在一些值得进一步探讨之处.这一方面在于二阶辐射条件还不甚清楚:另一方面在于已有的二阶力公式或是所含积分的收敛精度不易保证,或是表达式繁杂,不利于实际计算.本文在求解这一问题时,不是对二阶势提出辐射条件,而是对二阶势的周向富里叶分量提出辐射条件──Sommerfeld辐射条件.求解中,利用本文推导出的数学公式,简化了二阶自由面条件非齐次项的表达式,得到了形式简单,易于计算的二阶波浪力精确公式.二阶力计算结果与实验结果吻合良好.     

Maximum norm error estimates of efficient difference schemes for second-order wave equations

The three-level explicit scheme is efficient for numerical approximation of the second-order wave equations. By employing a fourth-order accurate scheme to approximate the solution at first time level, it is shown that the discrete solution is conditionally convergent in the maximum norm with the convergence order of two. Since the asymptotic expansion of the difference solution consists of odd powers of the mesh parameters (time step and spacings), an unusual Richardson extrapolation formula is needed in promoting the second-order solution to fourth-order accuracy. Extensions of our technique to the classical ADI scheme also yield the maximum norm error estimate of the discrete solution and its extrapolation. Numerical experiments are presented to support our theoretical results.     

Dynamic contact problem for viscoelastic piezoelectric materials with normal damped response and friction

In this paper, we deal with a class of inequality problems for dynamic frictional contact between a piezoelectric body and a foundation. The model consists of a system of the hemivariational inequality of hyperbolic type for the displacement, the time dependent elliptic equation for the electric potential. The contact is modeled by a general normal damped response condition and a friction law, which are nonmonotone, possibly multivalued and have the subdifferential form. The existence of a weak solution to the model is proved by embedding the problem into a class of second-order evolution inclusions and by applying a surjectivity result for multivalued operators.     

Dynamic bilateral contact problem for viscoelastic piezoelectric materials with adhesion

A model of a dynamic viscoelastic adhesive contact between a piezoelectric body and a deformable foundation is described. The model consists of a system of the hemivariational inequality of hyperbolic type for the displacement, the time dependent elliptic equation for the electric potential and the ordinary differential equation for the adhesion field. In the hemivariational inequality the friction forces are derived from a nonconvex superpotential through the generalized Clarke subdifferential. The existence of a weak solution is proved by embedding the problem into a class of second-order evolution inclusions and by applying a surjectivity result for multivalued operators.     

An efficient nonlinear iteration scheme for nonlinear parabolic-hyperbolic system

A nonlinear iteration method named the Picard-Newton iteration is studied for a two-dimensional nonlinear coupled parabolic-hyperbolic system. It serves as an efficient method to solve a nonlinear discrete scheme with second spatial and temporal accuracy. The nonlinear iteration scheme is constructed with a linearization-discretization approach through discretizing the linearized systems of the original nonlinear partial differential equations. It can be viewed as an improved Picard iteration, and can accelerate convergence over the standard Picard iteration. Moreover, the discretization with second-order accuracy in both spatial and temporal variants is introduced to get the Picard-Newton iteration scheme. By using the energy estimate and inductive hypothesis reasoning, the difficulties arising from the nonlinearity and the coupling of different equation types are overcome. It follows that the rigorous theoretical analysis on the approximation of the solution of the Picard-Newton iteration scheme to the solution of the original continuous problem is obtained, which is different from the traditional error estimate that usually estimates the error between the solution of the nonlinear discrete scheme and the solution of the original problem. Moreover, such approximation is independent of the iteration number. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical result, and show that the Picard-Newton iteration scheme with second-order spatial and temporal accuracy is more accurate and efficient than that of first-order temporal accuracy.     

Compact difference scheme for two-dimensional fourth-order nonlinear hyperbolic equation

High-order compact finite difference method for solving the two-dimensional fourth-order nonlinear hyperbolic equation is considered in this article. In order to design an implicit compact finite difference scheme, the fourth-order equation is written as a system of two second-order equations by introducing the second-order spatial derivative as a new variable. The second-order spatial derivatives are approximated by the compact finite difference operators to obtain a fourth-order convergence. As well as, the second-order time derivative is approximated by the central difference method. Then, existence and uniqueness of numerical solution is given. The stability and convergence of the compact finite difference scheme are proved by the energy method. Numerical results are provided to verify the accuracy and efficiency of this scheme.     

Mixed finite volume methods for semiconductor device simulation

We deal with the two-dimensional numerical solution of the Van Roosbroeck system, widely employed in modern semiconductor device simulation. Using the well-known Gummel's decoupled algorithm leads to the iterative solution of a nonlinear Poisson equation for the electric potential and two linearized continuity equations for the electron and hole current densities. The numerical approximation is based on the dual mixed formulation for a self-adjoint second-order elliptic operator by using the Raviart-Thomas (RT) finite elements of lowest degree on a triangular partition of the device domain. In this article, we propose a suitable variant of the RT method, based on the diagonalization of the element mass matrix. This is achieved by use of an appropriate numerical integration that eliminates the fluxes and gives rise to a cell-centered finite volume scheme for the scalar unknown with the same approximation properties of the mixed approach, but at a reduced computational cost. The above procedure suggests also a natural way to introduce in the frame of the classical Box Method (BM) suitable vector basis functions (edge elements) to represent the current field over each mesh triangle. This issue may be profitably employed both as a postprocessing tool, as well as a technique for solving the current continuity equations when source terms depending on the current itself are included in the mathematical model. Simulations of realistic semiconductor devices are then included to demonstrate the accuracy and stability of the new method. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An efficient nonlinear iteration scheme for nonlinear parabolic–hyperbolic system

A nonlinear iteration method named the Picard–Newton iteration is studied for a two-dimensional nonlinear coupled parabolic–hyperbolic system. It serves as an efficient method to solve a nonlinear discrete scheme with second spatial and temporal accuracy. The nonlinear iteration scheme is constructed with a linearization–discretization approach through discretizing the linearized systems of the original nonlinear partial differential equations. It can be viewed as an improved Picard iteration, and can accelerate convergence over the standard Picard iteration. Moreover, the discretization with second-order accuracy in both spatial and temporal variants is introduced to get the Picard–Newton iteration scheme. By using the energy estimate and inductive hypothesis reasoning, the difficulties arising from the nonlinearity and the coupling of different equation types are overcome. It follows that the rigorous theoretical analysis on the approximation of the solution of the Picard–Newton iteration scheme to the solution of the original continuous problem is obtained, which is different from the traditional error estimate that usually estimates the error between the solution of the nonlinear discrete scheme and the solution of the original problem. Moreover, such approximation is independent of the iteration number. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical result, and show that the Picard–Newton iteration scheme with second-order spatial and temporal accuracy is more accurate and efficient than that of first-order temporal accuracy.     

Numerical methods for solving terminal optimal control problems

Numerical methods for solving optimal control problems with equality constraints at the right end of the trajectory are discussed. Algorithms for optimal control search are proposed that are based on the multimethod technique for finding an approximate solution of prescribed accuracy that satisfies terminal conditions. High accuracy is achieved by applying a second-order method analogous to Newton’s method or Bellman’s quasilinearization method. In the solution of problems with direct control constraints, the variation of the control is computed using a finite-dimensional approximation of an auxiliary problem, which is solved by applying linear programming methods.     

Displacement potentials for functionally graded piezoelectric solids

Two new displacement potential functions are introduced for the general solution of a three-dimensional piezoelasticity problem for functionally graded transversely isotropic piezoelectric solids. The material properties vary continuously along the axis of symmetry of the medium. The four coupled equilibrium equations in terms of displacements and electric potential are reduced to two decoupled sixth- and second-order linear partial differential equations for the potential functions. The obtained results are verified with two limiting cases: (i) a functionally graded transversely isotropic medium, and (ii) a homogeneous transversely isotropic piezoelectric solid. The simplified relations corresponding to the special case of similar variation of material properties are also given. Furthermore, the special cases of axisymmetric problems, exponentially graded piezoelectric media and transversely isotropic piezoelectric media with power law variation are discussed in detail.     

A second-order space–time accurate scheme for nonlinear diffusion equation with general capacity term

A fully implicit finite difference (FIFD) scheme with second-order space–time accuracy is studied for a nonlinear diffusion equation with general capacity term. A new reasoning procedure is introduced to overcome difficulties caused by the nonlinearity of the capacity term and the diffusion operator in the theoretical analysis. The existence of the FIFD solution is investigated at first which plays an important role in the analysis. It is established by choosing a new test function to bound the solution and its temporal and spatial difference quotients in suitable norms in the fixed point arguments, which is different from the traditional way. Based on these bounds, other fundamental properties of the scheme are rigorously analyzed consequently. It shows that the scheme is uniquely solvable, unconditionally stable, and convergent with second-order space–time accuracy in L^∞(L²) and L^∞(H¹) norms. The theoretical analysis adapts to both one- and multidimensional problems, and can be extended to schemes with first-order time accuracy. Numerical tests are provided to verify the theoretical results and highlight the high accuracy of the second-order space–time accurate scheme. The reasoning techniques can be extended to a broad family of discrete schemes for nonlinear problems with capacity terms.     

A Second-Order Method for the Electromagnetic Scattering from a Large Cavity

In this paper,we study the electromagnetic scattering from a two dimen- sional large rectangular open cavity embedded in an infinite ground plane,which is modelled by Helmholtz equations.By introducing nonlocal transparent boundary con- ditions,the problem in the open cavity is reduced to a bounded domain problem.A hypersingular integral operator and a weakly singular integral operator are involved in the TM and TE cases,respectively.A new second-order Toeplitz type approximation and a second-order finite difference scheme are proposed for approximating the hyper- singular integral operator on the aperture and the Helmholtz in the cavity,respectively. The existence and uniqueness of the numerical solution in the TE case are established for arbitrary wavenumbers.A fast algorithm for the second-order approximation is pro- posed for solving the cavity model with layered media.Numerical results show the second-order accuracy and efficiency of the fast algorithm.More important is that the algorithm is easy to implement as a preconditioner for cavity models with more general media.     

A Second-Order High-Resolution Scheme for a Juvenile-Adult Model of Amphibians

In this article we consider a juvenile-adult population model of amphibians in which juveniles are structured by age and adults are structured by size. We develop a second-order explicit high-resolution scheme to approximate the solution of the model. Convergence of the finite difference approximation to the unique weak solution with bounded total variation is proved. Numerical examples demonstrate the high-resolution property and the achievement of the designed accuracy for the scheme. The scheme is then applied to understand the dynamics of an urban amphibian population.     

Perturbation of Solutions with Moving Singularities

We study the Cauchy problem for a nonlinear second-order differential equation with a small parameter in the case where the exact solution has a power singularity depending on a small parameter. We propose an asymptotic method similar to the Krylov–Bogoliubov method for localizing the singularity up to the accuracy of any order and construct an asymptotic expansion of the solution in the domain of regular behavior.     

A Second Order Unconditionally Convergent Finite Element Method for the Thermal Equation with Joule Heating Problem

In this paper, we study the finite element approximation for nonlinear thermal equation. Because the nonlinearity of the equation, our theoretical analysis is based on the error of temporal and spatial discretization. We consider a fully discrete second order backward difference formula based on a finite element method to approximate the temperature and electric potential, and establish optimal $L^2$error estimates for the fully discrete finite element solution without any restriction on the time-step size. The discrete solution is bounded in infinite norm. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.     

Conservative domain decomposition procedure with unconditional stability and second-order accuracy

A new derivation of the conservative domain decomposition procedure for solving the parabolic equation is presented. In this procedure, fluxes at subdomain interfaces are calculated from the solution at the previous time level, then these fluxes serve as Neumann boundary data for implicit, block-centered discretization in the subdomain. The unconditional stability and the second-order accuracy of solution values as well as fluxes are proved. Numerical results examining the stability, accuracy, and parallelism of the procedure are also presented.