Coupling Codes

The design for coupling codes in AMUSE is based on providing the same set of functions for every community code and using these to devise different coupling methods. As the coupling methods are not fixed and can change on a per problem basis the functions to be very generic. The AMUSE library defines three sets of functions to support coupling codes:

particle or gridpoint manipulation

Most properties of particles (or gridpoints) can be queried and updated during the run, providing a direct method of manipulating the data of a community code. Further most codes support removing and adding particles during the run.

stopping conditions

Stopping conditions are designed to interrupt a code during model evolutions. Stopping conditions are triggered when a code encounters a predefined state (for example a particle escaping out of the bounding box).

services

Services are functions added to a code that use the model of that code to provide data for other codes. For example a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code can provide the state of the model at any random point (not just on the particles) which can be used to create a grid from an particle model.