Easing multiscale model design and coupling with muscle 3

Abstract

Multiscale modelling and simulation typically entails coupling multiple simulation codes into a single program. Doing this in an ad-hoc fashion tends to result in a tightly coupled, difficult-to-change computer program. This makes it difficult to experiment with different submodels, or to implement advanced techniques such as surrogate modelling. Furthermore, building the coupling itself is time-consuming. The MUltiScale Coupling Library and Environment version 3 (MUSCLE 3) aims to alleviate these problems. It allows the coupling to be specified in a simple configuration file, which specifies the components of the simulation and how they should be connected together. At runtime a simulation manager takes care of coordination of submodels, while data is exchanged over the network in a peer-to-peer fashion via the MUSCLE library. Submodels need to be linked to this library, but this is minimally invasive and restructuring simulation codes is usually not needed. Once operational, the model may be rewired or augmented by changing the configuration, without further changes to the submodels. MUSCLE 3 is developed openly on GitHub, and is available as Open Source software under the Apache 2.0 license.