  Biofilm growth changes many physical properties of porous media such as
porosity, permeability and mass transport parameters. The growth depends on
various environmental conditions, and in particular, on flow rates. Modeling
the evolution of such properties is difficult both at the porescale where the
phase morphology can be distinguished, as well as during upscaling to the
corescale effective properties. Experimental data on biofilm growth is also
limited because its collection can interfere with the growth, while imaging
itself presents challenges.
  In this paper we combine insight from imaging, experiments, and numerical
simulations and visualization. The experimental dataset is based on glass beads
domain inoculated by biomass which is subjected to various flow conditions
promoting the growth of biomass and the appearance of a biofilm phase. The
domain is imaged and the imaging data is used directly by a computational model
for flow and transport. The results of the computational flow model are
upscaled to produce conductivities which compare well with the experimentally
obtained hydraulic properties of the medium. The flow model is also coupled to
a newly developed biomass--nutrient growth model, and the model reproduces
morphologies qualitatively similar to those observed in the experiment.
