Fluid flow and transport in defined biofilms: experiments and numerical simulations on a microscale

As in other fields of science and engineering, the need to understand and p redict biofilm systems both on a physical and on a technical scale results in an increasing demand for reliable and efficient numerical simulations of the different processes that take place within biofilms. For that, the exp ertise of biofilm specialists on the one hand and modern computational tech niques on the other hand have to be brought together. In this paper, we pre sent results of a combined and interdisciplinary attempt to simulate fluid Row and transport in defined pure culture biofilms at the level of continuu m mechanics. In order to provide a realistic setup for the simulation and t o offer possibilities for a validation of the obtained results, our approac h is embedded into state-of-the-art confocal laser scanning microscopy incl uding automated image acquisition and semi-automated image analysis within extended SD-regions of biofilm structures, which allow both the generation of real-life starting geometries for simulation purposes and the direct com parison of computed and experimental data. An important issue of our approa ch is flexibility, and the used code NaSt++ offers extensions for taking in to account biomass growth or EPS as well as for dealing with more than one substrate.