Robert Izzard's Pages of Astronomical Happiness

  Codes • BINSTAR, a binary full stellar evolution code for low

Welcome to the (likely very) outdated mirror of the website of BINSTAR , a detailed binary stellar evolution code.


The most up-to-date version of this website is probably the site at ULB. 

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PROGRAM binstar

BINSTAR is the detailed binary-modelling component of the ongoing stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis project at the Institut d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique at l'Université Libre de Bruxelles. It is based on the highly successful STAREVOL single-star code. It incorporates STAREVOL's physics package, namely a nuclear network containing 185 reactions, OPAL and molecular opacity, the Pols. et al equation of state, convection by mixing length theory, overshooting, semi-convection, thermohaline and rotationally induced mixing, structural deformation due to rotation and mass loss/gain. The ultimate aim is to model low/intermediate-mass AGB stars in binary systems.

The BINSTAR project is in collaboration with Lionel Siess, Tijl Dermine, Alain Jorissen and the team behind STAREVOL.

BINSTAR allows the fully implicit computation of both stars of a binary system and its orbital motion. Its key features are the following:
  • Much of the STAREVOL code was rewritten to facilitate the solution of two stars and updated to FORTRAN 90/95 standards.
  • Implementation of OpenMP parallel code to speed up execution on multi-core architectures.
  • A Henyey solver which calculates both stars and the orbital properties a, Jorb and e simultaneously.
  • Roche-lobe overflow by either a simple analytic treatment or a triple-integration scheme to maintain R=RL to arbitrary accuracy.
  • Wind accretion (Bondi-Hoyle)
  • Tidal interaction using Hut and Zahn's formalisms with self-consistent calculation of the E2 and k2 coefficients.
  • Interaction with Window to the Stars stellar evolution code graphical user interface.

See also:
2009 Belgian Contact Group talk about BINSTAR.
Window To The Stars - a graphical frontend to the TWIN and BINSTAR codes.
Binary_C - my binary population synthesis package.


RGI was the recipient of a Marie Curie-Intra European Fellowship at ULB from July 2008-June 2010. The research leading to these results has received funding from the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community under grant agreement 220440.

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