title: Influence of spatial structure on effective nutrient diffusion in bacterial biofilms.
abstract: The main contribution of this paper is to use homogenization techniques to compute diffusion coefficients from experimental images of microbial biofilms. Our approach requires the analysis of several experimental spatial structures of biofilms in order to derive from them a Representative Volume Element (RVE). Then, we apply a suitable numerical procedure to the RVE to derive the diffusion coefficients. We show that diffusion coefficients significantly vary with the biofilm structure. These results suggest that microbial biofilm structures can favour nutrient access in some cases.
authors.affiliation: Irstea - LISC (Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Complexes) 24, avenue des Landais, BP 50 085-63 172, Aubière Cedex 1, France, thomas.guelon@irstea.fr.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Guélon
authors.forename: Jean-Denis
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Mathias
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Deffuant
mesh_terms: D018441:Biofilms; D004058:Diffusion; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology