Mesoscale simulations of fluid-fluid interfaces

Fluid-fluid interfaces appear in numerous systems of academic and industrial interest. Their dynamics is difficult to track since they are usually deformable and of not a priori known shape. Computer simulations pose an attractive way to gain insight into the physics of interfaces. In this report we restrict ourselves to two classes of interfaces and their simulation by means of numerical schemes coupled to the lattice Boltzmann method as a solver for the hydrodynamics of the problem. These are the immersed boundary method for the simulation of vesicles and capsules and the Shan-Chen pseudopotential approach for multi-component fluids in combination with a molecular dynamics algorithm for the simulation of nanoparticle stabilized emulsions. The advantage of these algorithms is their inherent locality allowing to develop highly scalable codes which can be used to harness the computational power of the currently largest available supercomputers.