Unwelcome Friends

Termites are important to the environment, yet, they cause extensive damage to wooden structures world-wide. Most of the termite damage inflicted to structural timber is caused by subterranean termites. Termite damage could be considerably reduced through improved early detection of termite infestations in building structures. It is more beneficial to develop nondestructive termite detection methods to protect timber-in-service than to repair damage caused by termite infestations. Conventional methods of locating and identifying termites are mainly based on visual inspection technique which is neither accurate nor reliable. Hence, the main purpose of this book was to examine a nondestructive acoustic technology that could detect and locate termites in timber-in-service based on their ecological and biological behaviour. The proposed termite detection technique was designed to detect termites based on a number of factors such as infestation area temperature and moisture, termite movement, foraging behaviour, feeding and possibly by means of sensing the communication between foraging termites. An acoustic technique was used to test termite feeding and alarming sounds.