PRELUDIUM 19

Presentation

Wooden sculptures are an important part of the European cultural heritage, which is mirrored in the abundance of such pieces of art gathered in museum collections and decorating historical, especially religious buildings. At the same time, polychrome wood is among the materials most vulnerable to environmental variations which lead to irreversible structural and aesthetical damage.

This issue is particularly relevant for the preservation of wooden heritage in historic buildings which are heated during cold periods. Churches are particularly important category of endangered historic buildings as they usually contain valuable wooden furnishings and decorative objects. Most churches are heated now and the heating strategies are usually dictated by human comfort during services or cultural events on the one hand, and efforts to reduce energy consumption cost on the other. Temperature and in consequence also RH can vary significantly in a heated church over a short period.

The ambition of the project is to deliver sound data which would inform evidence-based environmental specifications for those interiors. A computer model of a sculpture made of lime wood and endangered by RH variations  will be developed based on fracture mechanics which allows risk of crack propagation to be calculated for historic objects which already have accumulated micro-damages over a long-term exposition. The developed model will be validated experimentally and used to assess risk of crack propagation in massive wooden objects, particularly sculptures, due to dynamic variations in temperature and RH.