Coupled cellular models for biofilm growth and hydrodynamic flow in a pipe

In this paper we present a hybrid model for coupling of biofilm growth and hydrodynamic flow in a pipe. A cellular automata model, which is a discrete model, is used to describe the growth of biofilm. This stochastic discrete model is coupled with a continuum model of the fluid flow in a pipe. The potential applications of the proposed model are the flow in drinking water pipe systems or in aquifers, where the porous media can be represented using pore-network models. The proposed model can be used to perform realistic upscaling of cellular automata models to the continuum scale. Numerical results and extensions of the proposed hybrid model are discussed in the paper.