Several systematic improvements have been made to the Arc Discharge multiphysics interface, including an improved moving mesh and remeshing solver for curl elements, as well as optimized material data and model formulations for improved convergence. A fully coupled 3D switching arc model — integrating magnetohydrodynamics, moving mesh, and external circuit effects — can now be completed within just a few hours on a standard PC.

Enhancements to numerical formulation, initial values, and boundary conditions in the Electric Discharge interface provide markedly improved stability and faster, more efficient computations. For time dependent studies, a new option Include time steps effect on stabilization time scale for Streamline diffusion Consistent Stabilization is available. The initial values and boundary conditions have also been adjusted to provide better initialization for solvers.

The Dielectric Interface, Surface Transport feature enables automatic handling of arbitrary interfaces between insulators, conductors, and charge transport domains. You can also include additional physics effects such as surface conduction and surface charge density for specific material interfaces.

The new Floating Electrode feature introduces dedicated functionality for modeling floating electrodes and their interactions with charge transport.

The new Dissociation feature adds support for modeling the Wien effect in dielectric liquids. This is useful for modeling electrohydrodynamic flow in dielectric liquids.

The Equilibrium Discharge material library includes several updates: material properties now exhibit weak dependence on pressure, the stabilization electric conductivity has been adjusted from 1 S/m to 10-3 S/m, and a new material, SF6, is added.