A Combined Finite-Element-Finite-Volume Method for Thermal Arc Numerical Simulation

Abstract Most of the numerical methods used for thermal arc simulation, are often based either on finite volume or finite element approaches but very seldom on both of them. In this paper, we present a new combined finite-element finite-volume method for stationary and unsteady cases. The flow, energy and species equations are solved using a classical finite-volume (FV) method which is conservative and bears a robust physical meaning. The electromagnetic equations (EM) are solved using finite-element (FE) analysis which has the ability to easily deal with their mathematical formulation without transforming the equations or doing any extra manipulation. We propose two separate approaches for the FE-method: one that is only suitable for a steady-state scheme and another that could be applicable for both steady and unsteady cases. Some illustrative numerical examples are also presented in this paper.