A Computational Study of External Shear Forces in Biofilm Clusters

We conduct a computational study of biofilm exposure to external detachment forces, utilising techniques from computational fluid dynamics and statistics. The results obtained for irregular arrangements of biofilm colonies are compared with those of evenly distributed colonies. This requires a multitude of flow field simulations in irregular domains. Our findings suggest that the biofilm community as an entity is protected better for non-uniform spacing between colonies, while the individual biofilm colony that lives under the worst condition is protected better if neighboring colonies are approximately equidistantly spaced.