The effective conductivity of random checkerboards

  • Authors:
  • Johan Helsing

  • Affiliations:
  • Numerical Analysis, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Lund University, Box 118, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computational Physics
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

An algorithm is presented for the fast and accurate solution of the electrostatic equation on multi-component random checkerboards. It relies on a particular choice of integral equation, extended as to separate ill-conditioning due to singular fields in corners from ill-conditioning due to interaction of clusters of well-conducting squares at large distances. Two separate preconditioners take care of the two separate phenomena. In a series of numerical examples, effective conductivities are computed for random checkerboards containing up to 10^4 squares with conductivity ratios of up to 10^6. The achievable relative precision in these examples is on the order of 10^-^1^1.