Monolithic formulation of electromechanical systems within the context of hybrid finite elements

In electromechanical devices, a strong coupling exists between the electromagnetic and displacement field. Due to this strong interaction, a need arises to develop a robust, fully coupled scheme for modeling electromechanical phenomena. With this goal in view, we present a monolithic numerical scheme for modeling fully coupled electromechanical systems. It is shown in the literature that for structural problems, hybrid elements that are based on a two-field variational formulation are less susceptible to locking and provide a robust numerical strategy especially for shell-type structures. Hence, we extend our monolithic formulation to the hybrid finite element framework. Our monolithic formulation is based on a total Lagrangian framework, where the eddy current and structural equations are solved on the reference configuration. Consistent linearization is performed to ensure a quadratic rate of convergence. The efficacy of the presented algorithm, and especially that of the hybrid formulation is demonstrated with the help of numerical examples.