Particles with a mean diameter of 5 mu m were filtered by a ceramic tubular membrane to study the effects of backwash on the performance of submerged membrane filtration. A periodic backwash can completely remove the formed cake, diminishing a part of membrane internal fouling, and, therefore, recover the filtration flux. In a membrane-blocking/cake formation comparable filtration system, the filtration resistance due to membrane-internal fouling is over twice as high as that due to cake formation. The irreversible filtration resistance increases progressively during operation, and it can be regressed to a power-type empirical relationship. Filtration period data were analyzed using blocking models. Membrane blocking occurs in the early filtration periods and is followed by cake filtration. The filtration flux can be simulated by employing blocking models and empirical equations for filtration resistance. The backwash effectiveness was examined by comparing filtrate productivity and washing efficiency. The calculated results of productivity under various backwash durations agree well with experimental data. An increase in backwash flux or duration leads to higher productivity, when the duration is shorter than 2 min; however, the productivity may be decreased with an increase of backwash duration due to the back pumping of more filtrate. A longer filtration time in each cycle results in higher backwash efficiency since a formed cake may efficiently prevent further membrane pore clogging and is more easily removed by a backwash. The optimal backwash conditions can be determined appropriately by the proposed method, with respect to both backwash efficiency and filtrate productivity. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.