
initial form of the interpolant basis functions, N, for the edge-based v ector FEM is
most common ly attributed to Nedelec [18].
Applications The FEM, described in the previous section, has several advan-
tages over other methods. Since it is fully vectorial, so all the field components can
be generated simultaneously. The elements can be a variety of shapes and sizes
[13], amenable to both structured and unstructured meshes. Other efficiencies of
FEM include the rapid convergence of the eigenvalues in higher order FEM, even
on coarse grids. Furthermore, boundary conditions may be applied to exploit the
symmetry of a problem. For example a common