Setting Up Adaptive Time-Stepping

The Adaptive Time-Step model automatically determines time-step sizes while the simulation is running. In this simulation, you use the Free Surface Implicit Multi-Step time-step provider which controls the time-step size so that the solver preserves a sharp free-surface interface when using VOF Implicit Multi-Stepping.

The Free Surface Implicit Multi-Step time-step provider determines a time-step size Δ t such that the CFL condition for implicit multi-stepping defined in Eqn. (98) is achieved for all cells in the vicinity of the interface.

To set up adaptive time-stepping:

  1. Reopen the Physics 1 Model Selection dialog and select the Adaptive Time-Step model from the Optional Models group box.
  2. Right-click the Physics 1 > Models > Adaptive Time-Step > Time-Step Providers node and select New > Free Surface Implicit Multi-Step.
    The Free Surface Implicit Multi-Step node is added under the Time-Step Providers node.

    Here, you configure the Free Surface Implicit Multi-Step provider for the simulation. You can enable the provider for the entire simulation, or enable it for a specified time range. In this case, you enable the time-step provider for the entire simulation.

    The Cut-off Percentage property makes use of a quantile-based filtering approach to prevent very small time-step predictions due to meshes with very small cells, or with ill-converged or spurious velocity fields. For this simulation, the default value of 0 is acceptable.

You specify the maximum time-step, the minimum time-step, and the initial time-step as solver properties. To prevent the time-step from becoming too small, you set the minimum value an order of magnitude less than the maximum time-step. The default setting for the initial time-step is acceptable for this simulation.

  1. To set the maximum time-step, select the Solvers > Implicit Unsteady node and set Time-Step to 2.0E-3 s.
  2. To set the minimum time-step, select the Solvers > Adaptive Time-Step node and set Minimum Time-Step to 1.0E-4 s.
  3. Verify that the Initial Time-Step Option is set to Auto. The initial time-step size at t = 0 is derived from the enabled time-step provider.
  4. Save the simulation.