TidalPy

TidalPy is an open-source software suite designed to assist researchers in the semi-analytic calculation of tidal dissipation and subsequent orbit-spin evolution for rocky and icy worlds.

Up-to-date information can be found on TidalPy's Github page.

TidalPy is intended to be a...

• Black Box (in the documentation this is referred to as the "OOP scheme" for Object-Oriented Programming)
  • TidalPy serves as simple to install (cross-platform) and, hopefully, simple to use package that users can pick up and hit the ground running.
  • The OOP scheme performs many calculations with very little input from the user. The major drawbacks are performance (in some situations) and that many assumptions are opaque to the user without some digging.
• Tool Box (referred to as the "Functional scheme")
  • TidalPy also contains many efficient functions to perform calculations relevant to tides and thermal-orbital coupling. These can be quickly imported and used in a custom scripts.
    • In general, the functional scheme will have much higher performance, flexibility, and extensibility than OOP. It also generally makes assumptions more visible to the user. The downside is the user may need to be more familiar with the underlying physics.