DynamO is a free and open-source event-driven particle simulator. Event-driven simulation is a fast and analytical technique for particle simulation and is an alternative approach to the more traditional time-stepping approaches (such as those found in Gromacs, Liggghts, and NAMD). DynamO is a reference implementation of many established event-driven models and a research platform for the latest advances in event-driven algorithms.

You can use DynamO as a molecular dynamics package to study model fluids or as a granular dynamics package to investigate solid particle processes (such as the hopper flow to the right). A wide range of particle models are available, from the basic hard sphere, to square-wells, stepped Lennard-Jones potentials, thin needles and more.

Take a look at the features / gallery section of the website to see examples of what systems DynamO can simulate. You can download a copy, and take a look at the documentation to evaluate it for yourself.

Latest News

Dynamo 1.4.0 Released

DynamO 1.4.0 has finally been released. This version contains many major improvements, including:

• Automatic full checking of configuration for invalid states on load
  As soon as the simulator has finished loading the configuration, it now verifies that no particles are in an invalid state before starting the simulation. If any particles are "overlapping" or the capture map has become invalid, these errors will be reported to the user on load. As these errors are the main source of difficulty, these changes should make DynamO much easier to use.
• Fully stabilised event-detection algorithms
  In this version of DynamO, all interactions have been reimplemented using the stable EDPD approach, as detailed in this preprint. This greatly enhances the stability of the simulator and even allows it to recover from some types of poorly initialised systems.
• Ubuntu Packages
  Users using a recent ubuntu version (12.04+) will no-longer have to compile their own copy of DynamO, as prebuilt packages are now available at the following PPA:
  DynamO Stable PPA
  More information on these packages (and how to use them) is available in the download section of the site.
• New Features
  A few new interactions, such as assymetric particle shapes, full wall support including compression and polydisperse particles, and constraint forces in gravity have been implemented. The features gallery has been updated with some example simulations using these features.
• Changed File Format
  Unfortunately, the file format has had to change to acommodate some new features and so configurations made using DynamO v1.3 will not load in v1.4. Although this is inconvenient for some users, at the same time many cleanups were also implemented to ensure the file format was as logical as possible and to maximise the flexibility/compatibility of the format so that future upgrades will not be so disruptive.
• Rewritten Tutorials
  As the file format has changed, all of the tutorials have been rewritten to reflect the changes to the way ranges are specified. This is part of a documentation push which will take place in the new year.

There are also a number of other minor bug fixes and improvements. Some of which are detailed in the Github Issue Tracker.

Copyright © Marcus Bannerman 2008-2013