An empirical failure model to predict biofouling growth on fired bricks due to microalgae

Abstract The purpose of this study was to provide an empirical failure model predicting the microalgae growth on fired bricks surfaces. It was developed through a numerical fitting of experimental data present in literature. It considered the substrate properties related to biofouling (i.e. porosity and roughness) of different bricks under several environmental conditions (i.e. relative humidity and temperature). Results shows that the model is able to simulate the microalgae biofouling by explicitly taking into account such influencing factor. Finally, this empirical failure model is validated on a different dataset from literature and applied to time varying temperature.