APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTATION, cilt.106, sa.1, ss.31-49, 1999 (SCI-Expanded)
Effects of pointwise thickness variations and material inhomogeneities in the dynamics of vorticies are investigated by means of appropriately formulated Time-Dependent Ginzburg-Landau (TDGL) based models for inhomogeneous thin films having constant thickness and homogeneous thin films having variable thickness. The resulting models are solved numerically using a nonstandard finite difference method for spatial discretization and a modified forward Euler method for temporal discretization. In particular, vortex pinning and flux trapping phenomena in both types of films are investigated. Our numerical simulations indicate that the dynamics of vortices are mostly affected by inhomogeneities introduced in the chemical composition of a material as compared to variations introduced in thickness of the material. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.