Environmental Influence on the Ventilation Mechanism of Termite Mounds: A Computational Study

Termites are famously known for building massive soil-based porous mound structures with intricate internal architectures. The purpose of these mounds is believed to be providing controlled microclimates and effective ventilations in the mound for the termite colony through harnessing wind, solar energy, and the colony’s metabolic heat. This study investigates the underlying physics of the ventilation mechanism within the complex structures of termite mounds. Here, we develop and employ an energy balance-based model that simulates the spatiotemporally variable surface temperatures in high resolutions and dynamically couple it with a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model to investigate the effect of the diurnally variable surface temperatures on the mound internal flow characteristics. The Navier–Stokes equations are modified in a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) using the Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer model to represent porosity. The results indicate new insights into the mound’s ventilation process and its internal convective flow features as a result of the diurnal variations in solar heating.