Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Three-Phase Hybrid Model Of Bacterial Biofilm Growth, Xing Jin

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Bacterial biofilms play a critical role in environmental processes, water treatment, human health, and food processing. They exhibit highly complex dynamics due to the interactions between the bacteria and the extracellular polymeric substance (EPS), water, nutrients, and minerals that make up the biofilm. In the current dissertation, a hybrid computational model was proposed for simulation of biofilm growth processes using a multiphase continuum for the transport of water and EPS, as well as nutrient diffusion, and discrete phase particles for simulation of bacterial cells and their interactions. Mass and momentum conservations of each phase and bacterial motion, rotation, growth, division, …

Methods To Remotely Eliminate Biofilm From Medical Implants Using 2.4 Ghz Microwaves, Brett Glenn

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Infections associated with biofilm growth are usually challenging to eradicate due to their high tolerance toward antibiotics [11, 12]. Biofilms often form on the inert surfaces of medically implanted devices [13]. No matter the sophistication, microbial infections can develop on all medical devices and tissue engineering constructs [12]. Related infections lead to 2 million cases annually in the U.S., costing the healthcare system over $5 billion in additional healthcare expenses [12].

Novel solutions to biofilm’s microbial colonization span the spectrum of engineering and science disciplines. Yet a practical solution still does not exist. The research presented here will explore a …

A Study Of Several Applications Of Parallel Computing In The Sciences Using Petsc, Nicholas Stegmeier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The importance of computing in the natural sciences continues to grow as scientists strive to analyze complex phenomena. The dynamics of turbulence, astrophysics simulations, and climate change are just a few examples where computing is critical. These problems are computationally intractable on all computing platforms except supercomputers, necessitating the continued development of efficient algorithms and methodologies in parallel computing. This thesis investigates the use of parallel computing and mathematical modeling in the natural sciences through several applications, namely computational fluid dynamics for impinging jets in mechanical engineering, simulation of biofilms in an aqueous environment in mathematical biology, and the solution …

Computational Simulation Of Mass Transport And Energy Transfer In The Microbial Fuel Cell System, Shiqi Ou

Doctoral Dissertations

This doctoral dissertation introduces the research in the computational modeling and simulation for the microbial fuel cell (MFC) system which is a bio-electrochemical system that drives a current by using bacteria and mimicking bacterial interactions found in nature. The numerical methods, research approaches and simulation comparison with the experiments in the microbial fuel cells are described; the analysis and evaluation for the model methods and results that I have achieved are presented in this dissertation.

The development of the renewable energy has been a hot topic, and scientists have been focusing on the microbial fuel cell, which is an environmentally-friendly …