We present LBsoft, an open-source software developed mainly to simulate the hydro-dynamics of colloidal systems based on the concurrent coupling between lattice Boltzmann methods for the fluid and discrete particle dynamics for the colloids. Such coupling has been developed before, but, to the best of our knowledge, no detailed discussion of the programming issues to be faced in order to attain efficient implementation on parallel architectures, has ever been presented to date. In this paper, we describe in detail the underlying multi-scale models, their coupling procedure, along side with a description of the relevant input variables, to facilitate third-parties usage. The code is designed to exploit parallel computing platforms, taking advantage also of the recent AVX-512 instruction set. We focus on LBsoft structure, functionality, parallel implementation, performance and availability, so as to facilitate the access to this computational tool to the research community in the field. The capabilities of LBsoft are highlighted for a number of prototypical case studies, such as pickering emulsions, bicontinuous systems, as well as an original study of the coarsening process in confined bijels under shear.

中文翻译：

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LBsoft：用于模拟胶体系统的并行开源软件

我们介绍了 LBsoft，这是一种开源软件，主要开发用于模拟胶体系统的流体动力学，该软件基于流体的格子 Boltzmann 方法和胶体的离散粒子动力学之间的并发耦合。之前已经开发了这种耦合，但据我们所知，迄今为止，还没有详细讨论过为了在并行体系结构上实现高效实现而面临的编程问题。在本文中，我们详细描述了底层的多尺度模型、它们的耦合过程以及相关输入变量的描述，以方便第三方使用。该代码旨在利用并行计算平台，同时利用最近的 AVX-512 指令集。我们专注于 LBsoft 的结构、功能、并行实现、性能和可用性，以便于该领域的研究社区访问此计算工具。LBsoft 的功能在许多原型案例研究中得到了强调，例如pickering 乳液、双连续系统，以及对剪切下受限双胶中粗化过程的原始研究。