Time-Step Selection for Creep FEA Best Practices

Best practices for selecting time steps in creep FEA — balancing accuracy, stability and computational cost.

Creep & High-Temperature4 min read

FEAbest practicestime stepcreepaccuracystability

Key practices

Start with small time increments and increase gradually
The creep strain per increment should be small (typically less than 1% of the total expected strain)
Use adaptive time stepping where available — the solver adjusts the step based on convergence
For long-duration analyses (years), use larger steps in the secondary creep region
Run a time-step sensitivity study — halve the step and check the result is unchanged
Monitor the convergence ratio — if convergence is slow, reduce the time step