Journal of Cultural Heritage 13S (2012) S161–S164

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Using mechanical modelling and experimentation for the conservation of

musical instruments
Sandie Le Conte a,∗ , Sylvie Le Moyne b , François Ollivier b , Stéphane Vaiedelich a
a
Laboratoire du Musée de la musique, 221, avenue Jean-Jaures, 75019 Paris, France
b
Institut Jean-Le-Rond-d’Alembert, université Paris VI, 4, place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Musée de la musique in Paris keeps a collection of more than 4500 musical instruments. Many of them
Received 2 April 2012 are subject to investigations aiming at improving their conservation conditions. The approach to study
Accepted 4 April 2012 these cultural heritage objects is pluridisciplinary, combining material analysis, research of historical
Available online 9 May 2012
context, and mechanical aspects. This paper focuses on the application of dynamical mechanics to a case
study, the restoration to playable state of a historical harpsichord. The mechanical model supported the
Keywords: decision for the “best” restoration and conservation conditions.
Musical instrument
Conservation
© 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Restoration
Mechanical modelling

1. Research aims The harpsichord, a complex wooden structure, is a plucked

Musical instruments are wooden structures made to vibrate.
Mechanical modelling and experiment are used in this research to
access to static and dynamic behaviour of the structure and to char-
acterize the material. The modelling can then be used to optimize
the restoration or to choose the material to be used in the case
of reconstitution. The paper will address the case of a historical
harpsichord.
2. Introduction
The Musée de la musique in Paris keeps a collection of more
than 4500 musical instruments and very few of them are kept in
playable condition, in the sense that they are ready to be played
according to the spirit of the instrument maker and the parti-
tions. For string musical instruments, it implies that both the
strings and the wooden structure are subject to a mechanical stress.
Consequently, one of the conditions to conserve these objects is
to understand the mechanical state of the structure – bearing in
mind that the approach to study cultural heritage instruments is
pluridisciplinary, combining material analysis, research of histor-
ical context, and mechanical aspects. The difficulty in this kind of
object is its uniqueness, implying very few statistics on the tests
and preventing the use of destructive techniques.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sleconte@cite-musique.fr (S. Le Conte).
string instrument. When the musician acts on the keyboard, he
plucks the string to produce a vibration, transmitted to the sound-
board through the bridge and amplified. The soundboard is one
of the most important elements in the sound production. In most
cases it is made of resonance wood (spruce or fir) plates glued
together and of varying thickness, covered by ribs on the back and
glued over few millimetres on the liner. Its vibration will be studied
using a mechanical engineering approach aiming at the conserva-
tion and restoration to playable state of a historical harpsichord. The
harpsichord will be considered as a wooden structure and the study
will focus on the soundboard behaviour (static and dynamic state)
before and after the restoration. The objective is to minimize the
restoration effect thanks to the soundboard modelling comparing
the stress field and the resonance frequencies.
3. The harpsichord restoration
3.1. The harpsichord
Harpsichord is a complicated structure made essentially of
wood (except the strings). There are few scientific studies on the
mechanical behaviour of such instruments in the literature. A
well-known work on two Italian harpsichords of the seventeenth-
century [1] is an experimental study, inspired by a similar work on
pianos [2], where the acoustical radiation of the two harpsichords
is compared. Modal analyses were performed in 1985 [3], by means
of the measurement of Chladni patterns on six antique and mod-
ern harpsichords. A structural modes study was completed on a

1296-2074/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.culher.2012.04.004
S162 S. Le Conte et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 13S (2012) S161–S164

modern harpsichord with an experimental and analytical study of

air modes (Fig. 1) [4].

3.2. The Couchet harpsichord

In 2003, the Musée de la musique in Paris acquired a harpsichord

made by I. Couchet in 1652 (Fig. 2). This instrument is a unique piece
of musical heritage and French furniture. It is one of the rare exam-
ples of the work of Ioannes Couchet. Unfortunately, the soundboard
was cracked in several places and the upper bellyrail (a lexicon
of the harpsichord terms is given in Fig. 2) was deformed by the
string tension. The main objective for the museum was to restore
this instrument to playable condition, meaning to repair the struc-
ture while modifying as little as possible the vibrational behaviour
of the soundboard. It was first decided to release the tension of
the strings and to remove them in order to repair the sound-
board. The second step of the restoration was the reinforcement
of the wrestplank to avoid future cracks in the soundboard and
to decrease the displacement of the upper bellyrail. Usually some
brass gapspacers and wooden blocks inside the box are added by the
Fig. 1. Couchet harpsichord, E.2003.61.1 Musée de la musique. Paris© . Cité de la
restorer.
Musique. A finite element model (FEM) has been performed with a dou-
ble objective: to identify the influence of different elements of the
instrument (string tension, boundary conditions) on the sound-
board behaviour and to guide the restoration.

Fig. 2. Description of the harpsichord (a) from multilingual harpsichord Lexicon, CBH, Syndney Australia; (b) from: http://www.hpschd.nu/index.html?nav/nav-
4.html&t/welcome.html&http://www.hpschd.nu/lx/lx-eu.html.
 S. Le Conte et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 13S (2012) S161–S164
Table 1
Mechanical properties of the harpsichord components from Bucur [6] after visual identification.
Component Species kg/m3
Soundboard, soundboard ribs, cut-off bar Spruce 440
Bridges, hitchpin rails Maple 500
Wrestplank Oak 610
Liners, Bottom, Upper bellyrail, upper frames Poplar 410
Blocks Limewood 410
Gapspacers Brass 7000
3.3. The mechanical modelling
3.3.1. Finite element model
The FEM, based on the complete technical drawing of the
Couchet harpsichord already made by D. Ley, is described in [5].
The wood species used were visually identified and the material
properties associated with these species, according to the litera-
ture, are presented in Table 1. The soundboard is assumed to be
uniformly 3 mm thick, although its thickness varies in reality from
2 to 3.5 mm – but is close to 3 mm on most of the surface. It is
formed from separate flitches but for simplification and because
the model results will be used to compare different mechanical
states due to restoration, and not to geometrical modification, it
will be considered as a unique piece of wood.
The static forces were calculated from the string tension
(according to a seventeenth-century French pitch standard A392,
i.e. 392 Hz) and from the angles between nut pins, hitchpins, tuning
pins and bridge. A local force with three components is then added
at each node of the bridges, nuts, hitchpins and tuning pins. Simply
supported boundary conditions on the whole surface of the bottom
of the instrument are assumed.
3.3.2. Model results and validation procedure
Static shear distribution and modal analysis results of the model
have been presented recently [5]. Fig. 3(a) shows the vertical dis-
placement of the soundboard. Fig. 3(c) represents the shear stress
in the soundboard when this element is included in the whole
instrument. The highest negative values are represented in dark
Fig. 3. Results of the finite element model (FEM) and the measurement of the harpsichord: (a): vertical displacement calculated of the soundboard (mm); (b): vertical
displacement measured of the soundboard during the restoration process (mm); (c): soundboard shear stress simulation when included in the whole instrument (N/m2 );
two calculated mode shapes of the soundboard.
S163
Ex(GPa) Ey(GPa) Gxy(GPa) ␯xy
14 1.1 1.36 0.37
10 0.43
12.5 1.9 1.1 0.35
9 1 5.5 0.2
9 0.2
100 0.35
blue and the highest positive values in dark red: the maximum
shear stress is observed in the extreme treble (bottom right corner)
and in the extreme bass (upper left corner). Observation of sev-
eral other harpsichords kept in the museum collection confirmed
that these are the two most fragile regions of the soundboard since
many, particularly that of the Couchet harpsichord, are cracked at
that level.
To repair the cracks in the soundboard the strings were removed.
This operation was realized slowly by the restorer and allowed the
measurement of the soundboard displacement during the string
removing process. The measurement was made using as a refer-
ence plane the spline top and the bentside. The distance between
the 8 bridge and the reference was measured for 10 points, and
the test was repeated with the 4 bridge. The opposite values
of the measured displacement were integrated in the FEM as
imposed vertical displacement and the resulting vertical displace-
ment field was compared to that resulting from the string tension.
Fig. 3(b) shows that the measured and calculated vertical displace-
ments are of the same order of magnitude. According to the use
and objectives of the model, this result is sufficient to validate
the FEM and our choice of material properties and boundaries
conditions.
Regarding vibrational aspects, modal frequencies and mode
shapes were calculated from 1 to 500 Hz. The modal density is
rather high with 60 modes found in this frequency range. Some
examples of mode shapes are shown in Fig. 3(d). The results are
consistent with the mode shapes found in the bibliography listed
above.
S164 S. Le Conte et al. / Journal of Cultural Heritage 13S (2012) S161–S164
Fig. 4. Use of the finite element model (FEM) for the optimization of the restoration.
3.4. Suggestions for the restoration and conservation conditions
The main step of the restoration was the addition of reinforce-
ments between the wrestplank and the upper bellyrail to avoid
future cracks in the soundboard and to decrease the displace-
ment of the upper bellyrail. Indeed the soundboard is supported
at one edge by the upper bellyrail and it is common to release
the stress on the soundboard due to the string tension between
these two parts, upper bellyrail and wrest plank. The chal-
lenge of this restoration is to reduce the stress in the structure
while modifying the dynamic response of the instrument as lit-
tle as possible to allow the production of a sound close to the
original. Usually the restorer adds some brass gapspacers and
wooden blocks inside the box. To validate the choice of the inter-
vention and to optimize the number and the position of the
gapspacers the different possibilities have been integrated in the
FEM.
Fig. 4a represents the shear stress difference with and with-
out these elements when three gapspacers are added. The
results show that a judicious addition of the spacers and
the blocks decreases the shear stress gradient observed in
the bottom right corner. Because the first function of the
soundboard is to vibrate according to precise frequencies the
influence of the restoration has also been evaluated using the
finite-elements modal analysis. The first 30 vibrational modes
without and with restoration additions were compared. As pre-
sented in Fig. 4(b) for the first 10 modes, a negligible shift
of the frequencies is observed. Modal shapes are identical,
except for small discrepancies for four of the 30 calculated
modes.
The more gapspacers will be added, the more the shear
stress decrease will be important, but also the more the sound-
board will be blocked so that the boundary conditions will be
modified. A compromise has been found between the number
and position of gapspacers and the conservation of the modal
frequencies.
4. Conclusion
In this paper, we have demonstrated how wood mechanics can
bring information to curators. In the case of restoration a FEM is
useful to optimize the restoration process without modifying the
vibrational identity of the musical instrument. The number and
position of additional brass spacers were optimised considering
their effect on the shear stress gradient in the soundboard. The
effects of the structural elements added during the restoration were
shown to be negligible with respect to the dynamic behaviour of
the soundboard. What is important for the conservation of musical
instrument could be also the conservation of the functionality of
the instrument according to a complete evaluation of all the cul-
tural values. Indeed, even if the musical instrument is not kept in a
playable condition we must be able to conserve, to document and
to transmit the know–how of the maker based on a mechanical
approach since the musical instrument is a mechanical structure.
Acknowledgment
The authors want to thank the Musée de la musique cura-
tor, Christine Laloue, who allowed the study, COST Action IE0601
WoodCultHer for supporting this study, and Joel Frelat (Université
Pierre et Marie Curie, France) for his contribution to the model.
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