Fast Fourier transform-volume integral: a smart approach for the electromagnetic design of complex systems in large fusion devices

A volume integral (VI) equation method based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is proposed for the electromagnetic simulation of complex systems in large magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) devices. Such FFT-VI allows for dramatically reducing the time and the human effort required to adapt the CAD input files to models suited for electromagnetic simulations. Moreover, with FFT-VI the mesh generation is performed automatically and is very efficient and robust. The adoption of the FFT allows for significantly reducing the computation time and the memory requirements, therefore making simulations with several millions of unknowns feasible. Numerical results show that, in terms of numerical performances, the FFT-VI method applied to challenging electromagnetic problems in representative MCF devices is markedly superior with respect to the state of the art VI techniques. A sample implementation of FFT-VI is made publicly available.

Automated summary

The article proposes a volume integral equation method based on the fast Fourier transform for electromagnetic simulation of complex systems in large magnetic confinement fusion devices. This FFT-VI method significantly reduces the time and human effort required to adapt CAD input files to electromagnetic simulation models, and enables automatic and efficient mesh generation. The adoption of FFT allows for a substantial reduction in computation time and memory requirements, making simulations with millions of unknowns feasible.