If a flow is inherently unsteady (e.g. vortex shedding) but a steady state solution is being solved for, will the residue still converge or oscilate at some point?

Hi,

It depends. If you are using a small physical timestep size in the steady state solution the residuals probably will oscillate. A test for this is to change the timestep size and see if the oscillations scale with it. If it does then you probably have an oscillatory solution.

If you use a larger timestep you can damp out the oscillations and get a steady state answer, but if the timestep becomes too large the solution will diverge. It is not always possible to get a steady state solution. Depends on the problem.

Glenn Horrocks

Try to change the relax factor in the expert parameter. May help with the convergence.

Hi Mark,

I think it unlikely changing the relax factor will help for most simulations. Usually oscillating residuals are indicating something more fundamental than that, either an oscillatory physical solution or incorrect pseudo timestep.

Glenn Horrocks

Yes, and.... for "weak" oscillations the turbulence model can dampen them out giving you a well converged steady state solution.

I have similar experience for this. While using KE model, no oscillation is observed. If you switch to SST or SSG model, the solution is still converged but with oscillation after the residuals drop to a certain level. The weak oscillation seems to have little effect on the solution. Anyone has different result?