High Voltage Engineering

&
Electrical transients
Chapter 1

By

Dr C S Reddy
(b) FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
• This method describes that an electrostatic field is
the total energy enclosed in the whole field
region.
• We know that electrostatic energy stored per unit
volume is given as

• Where electric field assumed uniform for a

differential volume δv, the electric energy over the
complete volume is given as
• Let us assume an isotropic dielectric medium and an
electrostatic field without any space charge. The
potential V would be determined by the boundaries
formed by the metal electrode surfaces.

• Assuming that potential distribution is only two-

dimensional and there is no change in potential along
z-direction, hence equation (14) reduces to

• Here z is constant and WA represents the energy

density per unit area
• The finite element method is useful for estimating
electric fields at highly curved and thin electrode
surfaces with composite dielectric materials especially.
(d) SURFACE CHARGE SIMULATION METHOD
• The Charge Simulation Method is difficult to
apply for electrodes with highly irregular and
complicated boundaries with sharp edges etc.
• Here a suitably distributed surface charge is used
to simulate the complete equipotential surface.
• The electrode contours are segmented as shown
in Fig. 0.3 and to each segment ‘S’ a surface
charge density is assigned by a given function
Sk(x) which could be a first degree approximation.
The electric field intensity at any contour point i due to kth contour
segment is given as

where fik are the field intensity co-efficients, This method require large
number of elements more than 2500
• COMPARISON OF VARIOUS TECHNIQUES

• Finite difference method (FDM) and Finite element

method (FEM) can be used only for bounded field.

• Charge simulation method (CSM) and surface

charge simulation method (SCSM) can also be used
for unbounded fields also.