Termites teach us how to build buildings that “breathe”
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Global temperatures continue to rise, and in some countries, including ours, summers are getting hotter and hotter. Air conditioning sometimes becomes a necessity, but we also know that it cannot be considered as the definitive solution: of course, it is effective for cooling our home or the rooms in which we work, at the price, however, of continuing to heat the external environment , fueling the dangerous vicious circle we know all too well by now. According to a study conducted by two experts in sustainable architecture and technologies, published on Frontiers in Materials, termites could help us: these insects are in fact capable of constructing real buildings capable of “breathing”. Inspired by their ingenuity, the result of knowledge accumulated over millions of years of natural selection, we could be able to design homes and structures that do not need to be cooled with air conditioning, and which are therefore more sustainable for the planet.
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The two researchers studied a species of termites found in Namibia (South-West Africa), the Macrotermes michaelseni, focusing in particular on the part of the termite mounds identified with the name of “exit complex”. The latter consists of a dense network of tunnels, mostly three to five millimeters wide, which has the function of ensuring appropriate ventilation of the entire complex, allowing, among other things, to eliminate excess humidity . To better understand how it works, the two authors collected and analyzed a termite mound fragment using computed tomography: the output complex was found to have a total volume of approximately one and a half litres, of which 16% turned out to be made up of tunnel.
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The researchers then created a copy of the original thanks to a 3D printer, subjected it to air flows with varying intensities and measured the transfer of air mass inside it using special sensors. The hypothesis of the authors, also tested through the use of different models and geometries compared to the original ones, was that the network of tunnels built by the termites was able to create some kind of turbulence within the complex, thus amplifying the effect of incoming airflow. And indeed, this is also what they concluded as a result of their analyses.
According to David Andréen, first author of the‘article and senior lecturer at the biodigital matter research group of the‘University of Lund (Sweden), the example of termites could therefore be applied to human architecture to promote ventilation in buildings and keep heat and humidity levels under control: “let’s imagine that in the future the walls of buildings, made with “Emerging technologies such as powder bed printers will contain networks similar to the output complex. These will allow air to be moved through built-in sensors and actuators, which require only small amounts of energy.”
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Also according to Rupert Soar, second author of the publication and associate professor at the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment of the University of Nottingham Trent (UK), the structures implemented by termites in the exit complex could help us solve several problems simultaneously: “maintaining comfort within our homes, while regulating the flow of air and humidity through the building envelope”. We just have to start planning.
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