Boundary Conditions

Boundary Conditions

• When an electric field passes from one medium to other medium, it is important to study the conditions at the boundary between the two media. The conditions existing at the boundary of the two media when field passes from one medium to other are called boundary conditions. Depending upon the nature of the media, there are two situations of the boundary conditions,

1. Boundary between conductor and free space.

2. Boundary between two dielectrics with different properties.

• The free space is nothing but a dielectric hence first case is nothing but the boundary between conductor and a dielectric. For studying the boundary conditions, the Maxwell's equations for electrostatics are required.

• Similarly the field intensity  is required to be decomposed into two components namely tangential to the boundary ( ) and normal to the boundary ( )

• Similar decomposition is required for flux density  as well.

• Let us study the various cases of boundary conditions in detail.