Modelling the development and growth of bacterial biofilms

When bacteria attach to a solid surface they form biofilms, which increases their chances of survival. These biofilms can be very useful for example in soil and water treatment; however they can also cause serious illness. In this thesis we study and model biofilms in both one and two dimensions, to increase our understanding of their growth and development. These models use a continuum approach where we ssume that the biofilm is a viscous fluid that is free to grow, whilst sitting on a solid impermeable surface. The esulting equations where solved using various numerical techniques, including finite difference, level sets, conjugate gradient solvers and parallelised code. Comparisons between one and two dimensions are made, to understand whether predictions from one remain true in higher dimensions. A variety of anti-biofilm agents are also investigated to see what effects each of these have on biofilms and whether it is better to use a combination of these treatments.