Inorganic-accelerated aging method: An efficient and simple strategy to obtain antique Chinese fir wood for the restoration of ancient wooden architecture

Abstract

Ancient wooden architectures, the precious material cultural heritages of mankind, were faced with huge potential safety hazards because of the excessive aging and natural disaster. Replacing failed wood structure with antique wood is a proper and sustainable method for the repairment and reinforcement, however restricted by the lack of antique wood and mature wood antique technology. In this work, an inorganic-accelerated aging method was put forward to simulate the aging of Chinese fir wood. The as prepared antique wood exhibited a very similar surface color to that of the ancient wood, with a small chromatic aberration of only 4.4. The change of chemical compositions after inorganic-accelerated aging was also explored that hemicellulose was degraded greatly accompanied by the partly degradation of lignin and amorphous cellulose, which were similar to the nature aging process and resulted in an increase of wood crystallinity. Besides the as obtained a-W exhibited satisfactory mechanical strength, of which the bending modulus, static bending strength and compressive strength was 97.7 %, 93.4 % and 93.6 % of the ancient wood, respectively. This work provides a promising strategy for the preparing of antique wood, which is of great significance for the restoration of ancient wood architectures.