Fast and accurate point-based method for time-harmonic maxwell problems involving thin layer materials

We present a high-order hybrid boundary-finite elements method well-suited for solving time-harmonic electromagnetic scattering problems. Actually, this method is specially devoted to perfect electric conductors coated with a thin layer material. On such class of problems this method is shown to be fast and accurate. The fast feature is due to the joint use of finite elements of anisotropic order fitting the layer thickness, and of a point-based boundary element method on the skin. The accuracy is ensured, first by a discretization scheme satisfying the Hcurl–Hdiv conformity required by the integro-differential equation and, secondly, by an adaptive technique of integration based on the detection of some local potential trouble on the geometry such as sharp edges or high dilatation of the elements. This algorithm does not need further information from the user and does not deteriorate the computation time. Numerical examples confirm the efficiency of this approach.