Conducting spheroid in uniform electric field

AI Thread Summary
The discussion focuses on calculating the field distortion caused by a conducting spheroid in a uniform electric field, specifically aligned along the z-axis. The user employs oblate spheroidal coordinates and has derived the expression for the electric field direction, but encounters difficulties when attempting to match the electric potential's gradient to the initial uniform electric field. They initially find a relationship between two square roots that simplifies their calculations but then face a new challenge with the series expansion involving Legendre functions, noting that nothing approaches zero at infinity. The user expresses confusion about how to proceed with the series expansion and its coefficients. The conversation highlights the complexities of applying oblate spheroidal harmonics in this context.
ShayanJ
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I want to calculate the field distortion caused by placing a conducting spheroid in a uniform electric field. The field direction is taken to be the z axis.
I'm using oblate spheroidal coordinates and the convention below:

<br /> x=a \cosh\eta \sin\theta \cos\psi \\<br /> y=a \cosh\eta \sin\theta \sin\psi \\<br /> z=a \sinh\eta \cos\theta<br />

I calculated \hat z to be the following:

<br /> \hat z=\frac{\cosh\eta \cos\theta \hat \eta-\sinh\eta \sin\theta \hat\theta}{\sqrt{\cosh^2\eta \cos^2\theta+\sinh^2\eta \sin^2\theta}}<br />

But when I write the first few terms in the oblate spheroidal harmonics expansion as the electric potential, and take its gradient to get the electric field, as the gradient formula in oblate spheroidal coordinates dictates, there is only a <br /> a\sqrt{\cosh^2\eta-\sin^2\theta}<br /> in the denominator but the initial uniform electric field is E_0 \hat z which has a more complicated denominator and so it seems impossible to match them at infinity.
What should I do?

Thanks
 
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Sorry...I found the answer. Those two square roots are related through circular and hyperbolic identities.
 
There is another problem.
The series expansion that should be used for finding the answer, by finding its coefficients, is:
<br /> \sum_0^\infty [A_n P_n(i \sinh\eta)+B_n Q_n(i\sinh\eta)][C_n P_n(\cos\theta)+D_nQ_n(\cos\theta)]<br />
Where Ps and Qs are Legendre functions of first and second kind.
The problem is, nothing goes to zero at infinity and also no two of them can cancel each other at \eta \rightarrow \infty. So I'm confused and don't know what to do!
 
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