Construction of the nodal conductance matrix of a planar resistive grid and derivation of the analytical expressions of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors using the Kronecker Product and Sum

Abstract

This paper considers the task of constructing an (MxN+1)-node rectangular planar resistive grid as: first forming two (MxN+1)-node planar sub-grids; one made up of M of (N+1)-node horizontal, and the other of N of (M+1)-node vertical linear resistive grids, then joining their corresponding nodes. By doing so it is shown that the nodal conductance matrices GH and GV of the two sub-grids can be expressed as the Kronecker products GH = I-M circle times G(N), G(V) = G(M)circle times I-N, and G of the resultant planar grid as the Kronecker sum G = G(N circle plus) G(M), where G(M) and I-M are, respectively, the nodal conductance matrix of a linear resistive grid and the identity matrix, both of size M. Moreover, since the analytical expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of G(M) - which is a symmetric tridiagonal matrix- are well known, this approach enables the derivation of the analytical expressions of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of G(H), G(V) and G in terms of those of G(M) and G(N), thereby drastically simplifying their computation and rendering the use of any matrix-inversion-based method unnecessary in the solution of nodal equations of very large grids.