Monitor Derivative

The monitor derivative report is a monitor-based report that numerically computes the derivative of one monitor with respect to another as of the latest sample time/iteration that they have in common. This shows how much one monitor is affecting another.

Use cases include:

  • Monitoring pressure at a point in a transient acoustics simulation, in which you want the derivative of that pressure with respect to time for an application
  • Monitoring force and displacement on a piston face in a shock absorber simulation, in which you want the derivative of force with respect to displacement to input into a linearized analysis downstream

To predict how a monitor value is evolving, you can compute its derivative of level 1, which is equivalent to the acceleration of the changes, as follows:

  • Derivative Order at 1
  • Accuracy Order to 3 or more
  • Additional samples to 3 or more

Monitor Derivative Report Properties

Units
Units for specifying the quantity. An exponent appears when you set Derivative Order to a value greater than 1.
Source monitor
The monitor to use as the source variable.
Differentiation variable
The monitor to use as the differentiation variable. It can be set to physical time or iteration to get a simple derivative.
Derivative Order
The level of derivative to obtain from the two monitors. The derivative order is set to 1 by default but it can be increased to get a derivative of higher degree.
Accuracy Order
Increases the order of the polynomial function used in the approximation to improve accuracy.
Additional samples
Takes a specified number of extra samples in addition to the Sample count originally specified in the Last N Samples node. The Sample count property value gets updated to reflect the total number specified. As with the Accuracy Order, increasing the samples can also get a better approximation function.

Child Node Properties

The monitor derivative report node has a child node named Last N Samples.

Sample count
The number of data samples N collected for each cell within the monitor. For the Last N Samples node only.
Sample start event

The event at which to begin collecting data. See User-Defined Update Events.

With the derivative report, it is usually not appropriate to use a sample start event, as the report handles its own input samples automatically. Using a start event policy may deprive the monitor from getting enough samples to compute the derivatives.
Include start event sample
When On, includes the sample at a start event in the sample collection.