Underground construction and tunnel excavation are known to redistribute stresses and cause ground displacement. Analytical solutions for stress distribution typically break down at shallow depths or in soil masses that exhibit high spatial variability, making numerical simulations necessary. Seeking to find new geometries and excavation strategies for underground construction, we propose to look to nature for inspiration. We extract 3D digital twins of Florida Harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex Badius) structures from a nest cast in situ and simulate the stress and displacement fields around that nest with the Finite Element Method (FEM). Stress invariants around the main shaft are compared to those around idealized geometric representations of that shaft, i.e., helixes with a fixed pitch angle and a uniform elliptical cross-section. Helical structures made of circular cross-sections and horizontally oriented elliptical cross-sections interact in a way that reduces the risk of tension failure and distributes the shear stress more evenly. One can show that in addition to the extra stability that they offer and the lower risk of tensile or shear failure that they exhibit, helical shafts have the advantage of requiring less power to excavate than straight sub-vertical shafts.

众所周知，地下施工和隧道开挖会重新分布应力并导致地面位移。应力分布的分析解通常在浅层或表现出高空间变异性的土体中失效，因此需要进行数值模拟。为了寻找地下建筑的新几何形状和挖掘策略，我们建议从大自然中寻找灵感。我们从现场铸造的巢穴中提取佛罗里达收割蚁 ( Pogonomyrmex Badius ) 结构的 3D 数字孪生体，并使用有限元法 (FEM) 模拟巢穴周围的应力和位移场。将主轴周围的应力不变量与该轴的理想化几何表示（即具有固定螺距角和均匀椭圆形横截面的螺旋）周围的应力不变量进行比较。由圆形横截面和水平定向的椭圆形横截面组成的螺旋结构相互作用，从而降低拉伸失效的风险并更均匀地分布剪应力。人们可以证明，螺旋轴除了具有额外的稳定性以及较低的拉伸或剪切破坏风险之外，还具有比直的亚垂直轴需要更少的挖掘动力的优点。