Fig. 3: Scaling of critical stress with biofilm size at the onset of buckling.

Various frictional forces are indicated by color (increasing from yellow to blue), and adhesion energies by symbol size (larger symbols correspond to higher values: \({\rm{\gamma }}=0.5,\,4.6,\,9.2,\,23,\,46\,{\rm{\mu }}{\rm{J}}\,{{\rm{m}}}^{-2}\)). Data for \({\rm{\gamma }}\le 0.5\,{\rm{\mu }}{\rm{J}}\,{{\rm{m}}}^{-2}\) are not shown, as all such cases converge to the same values of critical stress and critical radius. All simulations shown in this figure were initialized with a biofilm radius of \({R}_{0}=1250\,{\rm{\mu }}{\rm{m}}\).