What's the best order to run this simulation in?
 

Hi,

I'm planning to run a CFX simulation of a body that is free-falling which means that I'll use the ICEM replay remeshing and 6dof solver features.

But before I do this free-fall run I need to make sure my mesh and transient timesteps are okay for the stationary object before it starts to free fall. I've done one steady-state run with a mesh of "best guess" element sizing and residuals suggested the flowfield was transient. So I ran a transient simulation with a "best guess" timestep size and total time with the steady-state for initialisation.

So my question is this. Is it better to first keep the same time data the same and run the transient simulation on some finer resolution meshes. Or would it be better to first keep the same mesh and refine the timestep size? So should mesh or timestep independence be worked towards first?

It sounds from this that quite a few simulations must be conducted in order to get the single best setup for the run with the free-falling object, which'll have it's own set is assessments (i.e. remeshing criteria, numerics and RANS turbulence models)

Thanks

In stationary mesh simulations it is normally reasonably easy to get full convergence, a bit more work to get timestep convergence and difficult to get mesh convergence. In your case as a 6DOF thing it will be even more challenging again.

So normally I do timestep refinement first as it is easier and usually the timestep is OK for the other mesh sizes as well. But in you case that may not apply, can only just try it and find out.