On grouping individual wire segments into equivalent wires or chains, and introduction of multiple domain basis functions

Abstract

The paper introduces a method to cover several wire segments with a single basis function, describes related practical algorithms, and gives some results. The process involves three steps: identifying chains of wire segments, splitting the chains into shorter sub-chains, and assigning basis functions to the resulting geometrical structures. The method may improve efficiency of computations when modeling complex curved and quasi-static structures. In addition, the approach extends the boundaries of applicability for a thin wire kernel. An example is considered comparing three different splitting algorithms.