Self-healing concrete: application of monod’s approach for modeling Bacillus pseudofirmus growth curves

Abstract

Despite limited knowledge on the proliferation of bacteria incorporated in concretes as a self-healing agent, there are efforts to standardize such a technology. Proper mathematical models could potentially assist the design of self-healing composites and enable to harness bacterially-induced calcite precipitation (BICP) more efficiently. Here, we employed Monod’s model to reproduce experimentally measured growth curves for Bacillus pseudofirmus, a strain resistant to the alkaline environment present in cementitious composites. The model correctly predicted the onset of individual growth phases, quantified the effects of temperature and concentration of nutrients on the concentration of bacteria, and revealed relationships between the concentration of nutrients and the maximum amount of bacteria. The study contributes to understanding the bacterial growth of Bacillus pseudofirmus and characterization of its proliferation.

Keywords:

• Monod’s model
• bacterial growth
• Bacillus pseudofirmus
• self-healing concrete

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Zdeněk Prošek at the Czech Technical University in Prague for providing the microscopy image of CaCO₃ formations due to BICP.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant GA ČR 18-15697S], by the European Regional Development Fund [grant CZ 02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000778], and the Faculty of Civil Engineering at CTU in Prague [grant SGS19/141/OHK1/3T/11].