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Simulation of the joule heating of thin metal layers

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Hi,

is there any possibility to simulate the joule heating of metal structures with a very high aspect ratio?
I tried a simple example with a copper block with a length of 10mm (y-direction), a width of 10µm (x-direction), and a thickness of 1µm (z-direction) (see attached file).
This corresponds to the an aspect ratio 10000:10:1! A normal current density of 2e8A/m² was applied on one boundary in y-direction. The mesh of the copper block was "Free Tetrahedral" with scaled geometry: x-direction scale = 100, y-direction scale = 1, z-direction scale = 1000. This simulation works correct and results in a realistic voltage drop of 33mV and maximum temperature increase of 20K.
But if I reduce the thickness of the copper block down to 100nm or less, I can't find any way to simulate without this error:
"Failed to find a solution.
Divergence of the linear iterations.
Returned solution is not converged."
(setting mesh scaling: x-direction scale = 100, y-direction scale = 1, z-direction scale = 10000)

physics: Joule Heating (jh)

Thanks for your help in advance!

Christoph


0 Replies Last Post 23 set 2016, 11:16 GMT-4
COMSOL Moderator

Hello Christoph Langer

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