Sea Turtle Nest Heat Transfer
A CASE STUDY IN COMPLEX THERMAL HEAT TRANSFER
Figure 1. Nesting leatherback sea turtle.
Allowing a nest to be unguarded and alone with exposure to both predation and the harshness of the environment significantly increases the mortality rate of the developing offspring. However, for nearly 65 million years the sea turtle has exposed its clutch of eggs to such uncertainty - or has it?
The lone environment of a sea turtle nest is exposed to a variety of heat transfer mechanisms including heat conduction from the wide expanse represented by the sand bed, thermal radiation from the sun, latent heat loss through evaporation, and convective heat transfer from the exterior developed local boundary layer. Possible global warming threats to increase the base temperature of the nest also places in jeopardy the ability to ensure future female offspring.
Through detailed multi-physics simulation, including coupling heat, mass, and momentum transfer, the complex thermal time history for the time scale of incubation can be understood. Uncertainty quantification (UQ) techniques can also provide a range of thermal trajectories at varying parametric nest depth, radiation, etc.
COMERI’s research plan is to:
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Construct a computational model including all appropriate modes of heat transfer.