Higher order material spaces to represent non-linear material characteristics and source terms in FEM-computations

A new approach to represent the local change of material properties or source terms due to their nonlinear characteristics is presented here. The material function is given in terms of simple basis functions, allowing a higher order representation within the area covered by the finite element. This approximation as a higher order material space has advantages for the treatment of saturable ferromagnetic materials and temperature dependencies of conductive and permanent magnetic materials. It is possible to treat the material function space and the field solution as a coupled problem.