Coupled electrical and thermal transient conduction problems with a quadratic interpolation Cell Method approach

The Cell Method is an approach to the numerical calculation of fields that has been recently applied to the coupled computation of electric and thermal conduction using a linear interpolation of both the electric and temperature fields. In this paper a quadratic interpolation approach is presented. It is aimed at the achievement of an accurate field distribution computation particularly in complex domains such as biological structures. Such condition are encountered in the prediction of the thermal distribution obtained in hyperthermic treatments. Some results for a real case are presented in the paper. Index Terms--Biomedical applications of electromagnetic field, cell method, finite formulation, hyperthermic treatment, quadratic interpolation.