Discussion Forum

Check the tab 'time stepping' under the solver node.

Cheers
Edgar

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Edgar J. Kaiser
emPhys Physical Technology
www.emphys.com

Thank you for your reply Edgar.

In the ''time stepping'' node I can only set initial and maximum time steps but not the minimum time step.
This is the full list of what I see under time stepping node:
Method
Steps taken by solver
Initial step
Maximum step
Maximum BDF order
Minimum BDF order
Event tolerance

Am I missing something?

Yes you are right. The problem needs to be addressed another way. Obviously the solver isn't converging properly. You might need to check the nonlinear and termination methods.

It may also be that the physics isn't defined properly. BCs may be missing are may be set inappropriately. If you are using mf, make sure 'non-conducting' Domains have some small conductivity and you may need to use the 'Gauge Fixing for A-field'

Cheers
Edgar

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Edgar J. Kaiser
emPhys Physical Technology
www.emphys.com

I am using only PDE module meaning that I put all equations all by myself. I think solver is converging just fine since the first few steps (10-50) are quite big and close to initial step which is 1e-3. However, after some time time step becomes 1e-6 and later even 1e-8.

''You might need to check the nonlinear and termination methods''

what about these? Which non-linear method is better for my case? How should I know it? termination technique is set as Tolerance.

My model runs okay and all BC are okay since model gives good not false results. But the problem is that I want to expand my time span.

Thank you for helping me.

Hi

but if you change the "Steps taken by the Solver" to "Intermediate" or "Strict" you have a better control on the time steps

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Good luck
Ivar

Hi Rokas,

COMSOL reduces the time step size when it does not converge in the time or spatial domain, or even I believe, if it converges in the spatial domain but requires a lot of iterations. You can get a sense of the cause of the small time step from the Log output. Output column “Tfail” gives the number of failures to converge in the time domain and column “NLfail” gives the number of failures to converge spatially.

There could be several causes of non-convergence such as those mentioned earlier in this thread. Sometimes however the problem is due to incorrect scaling of dependent variables. The automatically calculated scale factors may be too big or too small. COMSOL reports the scaling values used for each variable in the Log output.

Nagi Elabbasi
Veryst Engineering

Hello Mr. Elabbasi,

I have a doubt in regard to your reply. I am performing a transient acoustic pressure simulation, where an ultrasonic wave is traveling through a material. I am using the "strict" option in "steps taken by solver" menu, because another option would lead to an out-of-phase solution (although the amplitud is O.K.). In the log info, I see that NFail is always 0 (no mesh-related convergence problems so far), but Tfail value starts from 2 (for the first time step) and continously increases to 16 (the last time step). I do not see that internal time steps chosen by solver are different (they do not decrease accordingly). So, what could be happening there?

Thank in advance. Best Regards,

Dan