Drag from biofouling challenges the spectrum of defense and commercial marine operations but is particularly problematic for battery-powered craft, including unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs)/gliders. While drag has long been attributed to larger organisms, microbial biofilms can directly create a drag penalty. Available approaches focus on antifouling coatings, but all methods are either environmentally harmful, costly, or ineffective. This is not surprising. Given that microbes occupy even the most extreme niches on earth, efforts to prevent all colonization in an ecologically friendly fashion are doomed to failure and essentially constitute costly directed evolution experiments. A logical strategy is to establish harmony with biofilms. We will develop a framework for biofilm engineering, aimed at sourcing microbial “building blocks” from the operational environment and rebuilding them into a beneficial biofilm state. Specifically, our team of engineers, modelers, biofilm experts, and marine microbial ecologists will focus on developing a biofilm community for reducing drag on UUVs/gliders to levels comparable to a hydraulically smooth state over the course of 6 months of operation.
Our results will benefit not only the UUV/glider industry, but also may be extended to the Navy, industries tied to marine transport directly or indirectly (shipping costs), and other marine infrastructure including sensors. More generally, our model-guided framework for engineering protective, stable, and resilient biofilms can be extended to address an array of challenges caused by fouling, for instance in oil production, water treatment, fuel tanks, the food and beverage industry, and nuclear power plants.
Acknowledgements
Project members
- Clemson University, Division of Research, USA
- CSEE, University of Essex, UK
- Life Science, University of Essex, UK
- Duke University, USA
- University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
