Numerical simulation of biofilm formation in a microchannel

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical approach to simulate biofilm growth in microchannels, incorporating complex factors like water flux, biofilm composition, and shear stress, using a splitting algorithm and ALE method.

Contribution

It introduces a novel numerical method combining a splitting algorithm and ALE technique to model biofilm formation at the pore scale.

Findings

Biofilm permeability significantly affects nutrient transport.

Simulation results reveal the impact of shear stress on biofilm growth.

The proposed model accurately captures biofilm dynamics in microchannels.

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the numerical solution of a pore-scale model for the growth of a permeable biofilm. The model includes water flux inside the biofilm, different biofilm components, and shear stress on the biofilm-water interface. To solve the resulting highly coupled system of model equations, we propose a splitting algorithm. The Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method is used to track the biofilm-water interface. Numerical simulations are performed using physical parameters from the existing literature. Our computations show the effect of biofilm permeability on the nutrient transport and on its growth.