TY - JOUR

T1 - A spatially stabilized TDG based finite element framework for modeling biofilm growth with a multi-dimensional multi-species continuum biofilm model

AU - Feng, Dianlei

AU - Neuweiler, Insa

AU - Nackenhorst, Udo

N1 - Funding information: This work is financially supported by the doctoral program “Multifunctional Active and Reactive Interfaces and Surfaces (MARIO)” at Leibniz Universität Hannover funded by the State of Lower Saxony in Germany. The authors would like to thank to Dr. Alexander Sapotnick for many helpful discussions. They also thank to Leibniz Universität IT Services for computing power support.

PY - 2017/2/21

Y1 - 2017/2/21

N2 - We consider a model for biofilm growth in the continuum mechanics framework, where the growth of different components of biomass is governed by a time dependent advection–reaction equation. The recently developed time-discontinuous Galerkin (TDG) method combined with two different stabilization techniques, namely the Streamline Upwind Petrov Galerkin (SUPG) method and the finite increment calculus (FIC) method, are discussed as solution strategies for a multi-dimensional multi-species biofilm growth model. The biofilm interface in the model is described by a convective movement following a potential flow coupled to the reaction inside of the biofilm. Growth limiting substrates diffuse through a boundary layer on top of the biofilm interface. A rolling ball method is applied to obtain a boundary layer of constant height. We compare different measures of the numerical dissipation and dispersion of the simulation results in particular for those with non-trivial patterns. By using these measures, a comparative study of the TDG–SUPG and TDG–FIC schemes as well as sensitivity studies on the time step size, the spatial element size and temporal accuracy are presented.

AB - We consider a model for biofilm growth in the continuum mechanics framework, where the growth of different components of biomass is governed by a time dependent advection–reaction equation. The recently developed time-discontinuous Galerkin (TDG) method combined with two different stabilization techniques, namely the Streamline Upwind Petrov Galerkin (SUPG) method and the finite increment calculus (FIC) method, are discussed as solution strategies for a multi-dimensional multi-species biofilm growth model. The biofilm interface in the model is described by a convective movement following a potential flow coupled to the reaction inside of the biofilm. Growth limiting substrates diffuse through a boundary layer on top of the biofilm interface. A rolling ball method is applied to obtain a boundary layer of constant height. We compare different measures of the numerical dissipation and dispersion of the simulation results in particular for those with non-trivial patterns. By using these measures, a comparative study of the TDG–SUPG and TDG–FIC schemes as well as sensitivity studies on the time step size, the spatial element size and temporal accuracy are presented.

KW - Advection–reaction equations

KW - Finite element

KW - Numerical dissipation and dispersion

KW - TDG–SUPG; TDG–FIC

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013428404&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.15488/1259

DO - 10.15488/1259

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85013428404

VL - 59

SP - 1049

EP - 1070

JO - Computational mechanics

JF - Computational mechanics

SN - 0178-7675

IS - 6

ER -