Abstract
Volatile organic solids, such as cyclododecane or menthol, have been employed as temporary reinforcement material during archaeological excavations. They are usually applied as melts and reinforcement is achieved once the melts solidify. Such solidification process can induce internal stress on the artifacts, which can be a big concern, especially to those very precious and fragile ones. However, information about such stress is still extremely limited at present. This paper proposes an experimental method based on resistance strain gauge technique to monitor the deformation induced by solidification of menthol melt. Bending tests are performed on very thin glass slides. The solidification process of menthol melt is well characterized by the development of mechanical strains. Then, menthol melts are applied to three kinds of simulated samples, i.e. glass, sandstone and rice paper, to investigate the mechanical response of preserved bodies upon solidification. It is found that menthol melt will generate certain amount expansion or contraction of the objects upon solidification. The stresses induced, evaluated according to obtained strains, are generally quite small, indicating that application of menthol as reinforcement material is safe in mechanics for cultural relics.
Highlights
At archaeological excavation sites, on-site consolidation is an important and widely applied conservation technique
Static resistance stress–strain tests on model samples Figure 4 provides the variation of strains and temperature with respect to operation time. It appears that the strain gauge on the top of glass I sample provides negative values indicating compression
It is known that solidification of menthol melt is accompanied by volumetric shrinkage [24], which leads to concave bending of the glass I sample in the present experiment
Summary
On-site consolidation is an important and widely applied conservation technique. Successful applications of CDD and menthol as consolidant have demonstrated their safety to cultural heritages [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25], vital information about the internal stress such as generation mechanism, magnitude and distribution, which can be interesting and helpful to conservators, is still unclear. Resistance strain gauge measurement method is introduced into the study of internal stress induced by solidification of menthol melts.
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