This class act as a step handler from the integrator point of view. It is called iteratively during the integration process and stores a copy of all steps information in a sorted collection for later use. Once the integration process is over, the user can use the {@link #setInterpolatedTime setInterpolatedTime} and {@link #getInterpolatedState getInterpolatedState} to retrieve thisinformation at any time. It is important to wait for the integration to be over before attempting to call {@link #setInterpolatedTime setInterpolatedTime} because some internalvariables are set only once the last step has been handled.
This is useful for example if the main loop of the user application should remain independent from the integration process or if one needs to mimic the behaviour of an analytical model despite a numerical model is used (i.e. one needs the ability to get the model value at any time or to navigate through the data).
If problem modelization is done with several separate integration phases for contiguous intervals, the same ContinuousOutputModel can be used as step handler for all integration phases as long as they are performed in order and in the same direction. As an example, one can extrapolate the trajectory of a satellite with one model (i.e. one set of differential equations) up to the beginning of a maneuver, use another more complex model including thrusters modelization and accurate attitude control during the maneuver, and revert to the first model after the end of the maneuver. If the same continuous output model handles the steps of all integration phases, the user do not need to bother when the maneuver begins or ends, he has all the data available in a transparent manner.
An important feature of this class is that it implements the Serializable interface. This means that the result of an integration can be serialized and reused later (if stored into a persistent medium like a filesystem or a database) or elsewhere (if sent to another application). Only the result of the integration is stored, there is no reference to the integrated problem by itself.
One should be aware that the amount of data stored in a ContinuousOutputModel instance can be important if the state vector is large, if the integration interval is long or if the steps are small (which can result from small tolerance settings in {@link AdaptiveStepsizeIntegrator adaptive step size integrators}).
@see StepHandler @see StepInterpolator @version $Revision: 620312 $ $Date: 2008-02-10 12:28:59 -0700 (Sun, 10 Feb 2008) $ @since 1.2 | |
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