Electrostatic Potential in Air-Filled Frame

This example shows how to find the electrostatic potential in an air-filled annular quadrilateral frame by using the unified workflow.

The PDE governing this problem is Poisson's equation

$-\nabla \cdot \left(\epsilon \nabla \mathit{V}\right)=\rho$.

Here, $\rho$ is the space charge density, and $\epsilon$ is the absolute dielectric permittivity of the material. The toolbox uses the relative permittivity of the material ${\epsilon }_{\mathit{r}}$, such that $\epsilon ={\epsilon }_{\mathit{r}}{\epsilon }_0$, where ${\epsilon }_0$ is the absolute permittivity of the vacuum. The relative permittivity for air is 1.00059. Note that the permittivity of the air does not affect the result in this example as long as the coefficient is constant.

Assuming that there is no charge in the domain, Poisson's equation simplifies to the Laplace equation: ΔV = 0. For this example, use these boundary conditions:

Create a finite element analysis model for electrostatic analysis. Include a geometry of a frame.

model = femodel(AnalysisType="electrostatic", ...
                    Geometry="Frame.stl");

Plot the geometry of the frame with edge labels.

pdegplot(model.Geometry,EdgeLabels="on");

Specify the vacuum permittivity value in the SI system of units.

model.VacuumPermittivity = 8.8541878128e-12;

Specify the relative permittivity of the material.

model.MaterialProperties = ...
        materialProperties(RelativePermittivity=1.00059);

Specify the electrostatic potential at the inner boundary.

model.EdgeBC([1 2 4 6]) = edgeBC(Voltage=1000);

Specify the electrostatic potential at the outer boundary.

model.EdgeBC([3 5 7 8]) = edgeBC(Voltage=0);

Generate the mesh. This assignment updates the mesh stored in the Geometry property of the model.

model = generateMesh(model);

Solve the model. Plot the electric potential distribution using the Contour parameter to display equipotential lines.

R = solve(model); 
u = R.ElectricPotential;
pdeplot(model.Mesh,XYData=u,Contour="on")