2.5 Interrupting, Restarting, and Continuing a Calculation

You can interrupt the calculation in an interactive FLUENT session by using the Cancel button or by typing <CTRL-C> in the FLUENT console window.

You can also interrupt a FLUENT calculation in the background by using the Progress Monitor in Workbench. The Progress Monitor is useful if you would like some visual feedback on the progress of your calculations. Typically, the Progress Monitor is hidden, but can be displayed at the bottom of the Project Schematic by toggling the Show Progress button.

Figure 2.5.1: The Show Progress Button in Workbench

When the Progress Monitor is displayed, the Show Progress button becomes the Hide Progress button, so the button can be used to toggle the display of the Progress Monitor.

Figure 2.5.2: The Hide Progress Button, the Progress Monitor and the Stop icon in Workbench

To interrupt an on-going FLUENT calculation from Workbench, select the icon in the Progress Monitor (see Figure  2.5.2). This will display a prompt, asking if you would like to interrupt or stop the calculations.

Figure 2.5.3: The Workbench Prompt

Selecting Interrupt stops the calculation at the next point where data can be safely stored for later use. Selecting Stop stops the calculation immediately without concern for whether data associated with the current action can be stored.

When the calculation is interrupted from within an interactive FLUENT session, it always stops the data at the next point where data can be safely stored for later use.

When a calculation is interrupted, the state of the Solution cell becomes Interrupted. If a background calculation is interrupted, FLUENT writes the case and data file and then closes.

You can restart a previously interrupted FLUENT calculation from within Workbench by right-clicking on the Solution cell and selecting the Continue Calculation option from the context menu. This will allow you to restart the calculation from the current case and data files, performing the total number of iterations (or time-steps) specified in the case file.

If you interrupt a calculation, review the results, and decide that the solution is converged, you can force the Solution cell state to be Up-to-Date by right-clicking on the Solution cell and selecting the Accept Interrupted Solution as Up-to-Date option from the context menu.