Orbital period-eccentricity distributions of 20 000 modelled EEVs. (a) Initial distribution of e as a function of P_orb. Colour-coding corresponds to the termination conditions described in Sect. 3.2.3, i.e. the RLOF of the primary component during periastron passages before reaching the TAMS (black), exhaustion of hydrogen in the primary’s core (primary at the TAMS, green), almost complete circularisation of the orbit (e = 0.01, magenta), and the maximum allowed rotation rate of the primary component (Ω/Ω_crit = 0.75, orange). A pair of horizontal dashed lines mark the boundary values of the initial eccentricity, e = 0.8 and e = 0.2. (b) Same as in panel a, but for the final state of each modelled binary system. (c) Random selection of 400 orbital evolution tracks with the same colour-coding as in panels a and b.