This article was originally published in Studies in Conservation.

Pleas quote as:

Ł. Bratasz, ‘Allowable microclimatic variations for painted wood’, Studies in Conservation,

58, 65-79, 2013

ALLOWABLE MICROCLIMATIC VARIATIONS FOR PAINTED

WOOD

Łukasz Bratasz

ABSTRACT [heading]

Environmental standards for cultural heritage collections have been much debated in recent

years. The interest in the issue has been driven by the growing movement towards green

museums, that is, managing indoor museum environments in a responsible and efficient

manner, especially in terms of reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions but at the

same time maintaining high standards of collection care. Painted wood is among the category

of heritage objects most vulnerable to relative humidity and temperature fluctuations.

Therefore, scientific understanding of how changes in environmental conditions ultimately

affect painted wood is crucial to the development of rational guidelines for the control of

climate in museums and historic buildings. This review provides a systematic progression

through two fundamental approaches to establish the allowable ranges of climatic variations –

an analysis of the mechanical response of painted wood as a complex, multilayer system to

climate variations, and an analysis of the historic climate to which the objects have

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acclimatised. The climate specifications and standards based on both these approaches are

reviewed.

KEYWORDS [heading]

Allowable microclimate variations, specifications and standards, painted wood, physical

damage, cracking, green museums, energy consumption

Introduction [heading]

Environmental standards for cultural heritage collections on display, in storage or in transit

have been much debated in recent years. The transcriptions of two roundtables of the

International Institute for Conservation: ‘Climate Change and Museum Collections’ in 2008

and ‘The Plus/Minus Dilemma: The Way Forward in Environmental Guidelines’ in 2010 (IIC,

2008; IIC, 2010) illustrate the problems discussed. The interest in the issue has been driven by

the growing movement towards green museums, that is, managing indoor museum

environments in a responsible and efficient manner, especially in terms of reducing energy

consumption and carbon emissions but at the same time maintaining high standards of

collection care. Painted wood is among the category of heritage objects most vulnerable to

relative humidity (RH) and temperature fluctuations and therefore scientific understanding of

how changes in environmental conditions ultimately affect painted wood is crucial to the

development of rational guidelines for the control of climate in museums and historic

buildings.

Painted wooden objects are complex multi-layer structures composed of humidity-sensitive

materials – wood, animal glue, gesso and paints which respond dimensionally to variations in

RH and temperature in their environment. Different dimensional changes of the individual

layers in the structure induce stresses, which can cause cracking and flaking of the ground and

paint layers. Further, the constraint of wood from free movement can cause deformation and

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cracking of the wood, and subsequent cracking and flaking of the pictorial layer. The concept

that a stable climate offers long-term stability for painted wood has, for a long time, been

derived from practical observations; a much quoted example was the observation that the

wartime storage of the collection of the National Gallery in London in a slate quarry reduced

flaking previously found to occur while the collection was on exhibition at the Gallery

(Davies & Rawlins, 1946). However, only relatively recently were two key issues – the

dimensional response of the objects to changes in temperature and RH, and the critical levels

of strain at which materials begin to deform plastically or fail physically – systematically

examined (Mecklenburg & Tumosa, 1991a, 1991b; Mecklenburg, et al., 1998). The structural

analysis of painted wood has allowed maps of allowable RH variations to be produced which

take into account their amplitude, duration and starting RH level (Mecklenburg, et al., 1998;

Jakieła, et al., 2008a) as well as proposing environmental specifications for collections of

historic objects (Erhardt & Mecklenburg, 1994; Museums, 2007).

Another concept used to establish the criteria for climate control has been that of the

‘acclimatisation’ of painted wooden objects to the environment within which they have been

preserved for a long time. Michalski (2009) coined the term ‘proofed fluctuation’ defined as

the pattern of largest RH or temperature fluctuations to which the object has been exposed in

the past. It was assumed that the risk of physical damage beyond that already accumulated in

the past from fluctuations which do not go beyond the proofed pattern is extremely low. The

‘acclimatisation’ concept was explicitly expressed in the standards on the control of indoor

environmental conditions favouring the conservation of sensitive historic materials (UNI

10969, 2002; EN 15757, 2010).

This review provides a systematic progression through the concepts, scientific research and

exemplary case studies from conservation and museum practice. The ultimate intent of the

review is to highlight scientific tools for the assessment of strategies for the environmental

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control needed to maintain high standards of preservation of the objects with affordable and

efficient means, even as energy costs rise and limits on carbon emissions are imposed.

Structural response of painted wood to variations in ambient relative

humidity [heading]

Sorption of moisture by wood species used in historic objects [sub-heading]

Wood is a hygroscopic material which gains moisture when RH is high and loses moisture

when the surrounding air is dry. The moisture content in wood exposed to a given temperature

and RH eventually attains a constant level - the equilibrium moisture content (EMC). The

relationships between the RH and EMC at constant temperatures are termed water adsorption

or desorption isotherms and for wood (and many organic materials) they are described by a

sigmoid shape of the type II isotherm in the classification by the International Union of Pure

and Applied Chemistry (Sing, et al., 1985) (Figure 1). A distinct hysteresis effect is observed,

that is, higher moisture content during desorption when compared to that during adsorption at

any given RH value. In the paper by Sing, et al. (1985), this phenomenon is associated with

the swelling of a non-rigid wood structure in the course of adsorption so that the effect is in

fact the elastic hysteresis of wood.

For most practical purposes, moisture sorption by wood as a material may be approximated by

empirical formulae which are applicable to any mixed wood collections in museums or

interior furnishings of historic buildings. The individual adsorption and desorption isotherms

of water vapour were measured for 21 wood species used in the past for panel paintings and

woodcarving (Grosser & Geier, 1975; Grosser & Grässle, 1976) and interpreted with the use

of the Guggenheim-Andersen-de Boer (GAB) three-parameter sorption equation (Bratasz, et

al, 2011a). The same equation was used to derive average adsorption and desorption

isotherms from the entire set of sorption data measured for all 21 species (Figure 1). Moisture
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sorption was found to be relatively invariant between various wood species reflecting similar

chemistry of wood composition. Two other general empirical formulae for the EMC values of

wood for a given temperature and RH were proposed and are also shown in Figure 1

(Simpson & TenWolde, 1999; Vici, 2011). However, they do not distinguish between the

adsorption and desorption branches.

Dimensional response of wood to moisture [sub-heading]

Changes in moisture adsorption of wood cause changes in dimension of the wood.

Temperature effects will be discussed in a later section. Wood shrinks as it loses moisture and

swells when it gains moisture. Wood is anisotropic and its moisture-related dimensional

changes vary in its three principal anatomical axes – longitudinal, or parallel to grain, radial

and tangential. For most practical purposes, wood can be considered dimensionally stable

parallel to its grain. The most pronounced moisture response is in the tangential direction and

it halves in the radial one. Swelling and shrinkage behaviour of individual wood species in

radial and tangential direction was provided for 21 wood species used in the past for panel

paintings and woodcarving (Bratasz, et al., 2010). As for the sorption isotherms, the ‘average’

swelling and shrinkage isotherms were derived by fitting the polynomial of degree 3 to the

adsorption (swelling) and desorption (shrinkage) data for all the wood species studied and

they are shown for the tangential and radial directions in Figure 2.The coefficients of the

polynomial fit and coefficients of upper and lower confidence bands for a confidence level of

0.95 are given in Table 1.

A convenient way of expressing the swelling and shrinkage behaviour of wood is to plot

dimensional change as a function of EMC rather than RH. The results for the species in Ref.

(Bratasz, et al., 2010) did not show significant differences between the dimensional change

values at the same EMC but obtained for adsorption or desorption. The relationship between

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the dimensional change and EMC was close to linear between approximately 3 - 12% EMC

which corresponds to about 10-70% RH. For the species analysed, the average values of

dimensional change coefficients determined by the linear fit across that range were 0.030

%RH-1 and 0.056 %RH-1 in the radial and tangential directions, respectively, and the average

ratio of these coefficients was 0.53.

Mechanical properties of wood [sub-heading]

Wood deforms when force is applied and the stress-strain curve illustrates subsequent phases

of the material deformation by increasing stress (Figure 3). Strain is the change in length

divided by the specimen original length and stress is calculated by dividing the force (load)

applied to the test specimen by its cross-sectional area. The strain that can be recovered

immediately on the release of the stress is termed the elastic response. The initial part of the

curve is almost linear, and it is part of this elastic response. The slope corresponds to the

modulus of elasticity that is a measure of the stiffness or flexibility of the material. It is

noteworthy that wood is typically 50 times more rigid in the longitudinal direction than in the

tangential one, and 25 times more than in the radial one. The yield strain defines the upper

limit of the elastic range at which non-recoverable plastic deformation begins. It is known to

occur near, or above, the point where the curve begins to deviate significantly from a straight

line. The final recorded point of the stress-strain curve is the strain at which a material fails

via fracture and the stress noted at failure defines the strength of the material. A frequent

convention is to determine the yield strain by a deflection of the stress-strain curve from a

straight line, which provides a conservative estimate of the true yield strain based on the

criterion of non-recoverable change. The yield strain of wood and the strain at failure

perpendicular to grain are generally around 0.005 and 0.02, respectively, at the RH mid-range

(Mecklenburg, et al., 1998). It has been shown that the yield strain is slightly lower in the

radial anatomical direction than in the tangential one (Jakieła, et al., 2008a). The yield strain

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remains constant at all RH levels whereas the strain at failure increases with increasing RH,

and the change becomes dramatic between 80 and 100% RH.

Wood experiences time-dependent behaviour – it either creeps when there is a fixed load

applied or stress relaxes when a fixed strain is applied. The effect is illustrated in Figure 4 by

stress-strain curves obtained at two different rates of incremental tensile loading: 30 seconds

or 1 week of stress relaxation were allowed at each loading point, respectively (Mecklenburg,

2008). The elasticity modulus decreased by about 50% for the slow loading, the stress at

failure was considerably reduced but the yield strain remained practically the same for the

rapid or slow loading. An increase of the strain at failure was observed for long loading times

(Madsen, 1975).

Stress development in wood when restrained during changes in RH [sub-heading]

When wood is restrained from movement and desiccated upon fall in ambient RH, it

experiences an increase in tensile strain and stress, as effectively the material undergoes free

shrinkage and is ‘stretched’ back to its original restrained length. Similarly, if wood is

restrained from movement and humidified, it experiences an increase in compressive strain

and stress, as effectively the material undergoes free swelling and is ‘compressed’ back to its

original restrained length.

Restraint may result from rigid construction restricting movement, or by assembling wood

elements with different mutual orientation of their fibre direction. Wood can also experience

internal restraint as the moisture diffusion is not instantaneous and uneven moisture change

induces uneven dimensional response, when the outer parts of the wood respond more quickly

than the interior to variations in ambient RH. Uneven dimensional response in opposite faces

of decorated panels due to a lower permeability of the painted face to the moisture flow is

another cause of restraint (Allegretti & Raffaelli, 2008). Table 2 contains examples of studies

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on typical manifestations of physical damage of wooden objects caused by external or internal

restraints that prevent wood from freely swelling or shrinking across its grain in response to

RH fluctuations (Brewer & Forno, 1997; Schellen, 2002; Dureisseix, et al., 2006; Vici, et al.,

2006; Bratasz, et al., 2007a; Knight & Thickett, 2007; Bratasz, et al., 2008).

Criterion of yield of fully restrained wood for the allowable RH variations [sub-heading]

Mecklenburg, Tumosa & Erhard (1998) proposed the yield strain as a ‘failure criterion’, that

is, allowable RH variations should not cause strains in fully restrained wood exceeding its

yield strain so that the response of the materials should at all times stay in the elastic

(reversible) region. It is easy to note that the selection is very conservative as the wood must

be stretched considerably beyond the yield strain before it breaks as illustrated by the location

of the yield strain at 0.003 or 0.004 (depending on the anatomical direction) in relation to the

breaking strains that range from 0.015 to 0.025 (Figure 3). Furthermore, since wood is most

dimensionally responsive in its tangential direction, a criterion for the allowable RH

fluctuations should be based on the examination of strain development in the tangential

direction as the worst case condition.

The domains of allowable RH fluctuations thus established for lime- and cottonwood are

compared in Figure 5 with a broader allowable RH zone derived basing on smaller strain

development in the radial direction in Japanese cypress. RH variations occurring within the

upper and lower limits of the domains – which are the compression and tension yield lines,

respectively – will produce a safe, reversible response of the wood. It should be noted that

(particularly for the cottonwood) the upper and lower RH regions have narrower bands of RH

fluctuation before yield than the middle region of moderate RH. This arises due to the

increased slopes of the EMC/RH curves in the upper and lower parts of the sigmoidal curve.

The magnitudes illustrated in Figure 5 from lime- and cottonwood provide a cautious

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‘baseline’ in the environmental standards for safe display and storage of wood as they are

based on the extremes of conservative criterion of the wood’s yield and assumptions of worst

case response of fully restrained wood in the tangential direction. When the response of a

wooden object is smaller due to the sub-tangential or radial cut, the magnitude of the

allowable RH variations increases. The same effect, that is, an increase of the allowable RH

variation, can result from a reduced restraint on the wood’s movement.

Moisture-induced response of animal glue and gesso [sub-heading]

The animal glue used to size the wooden support prior to painting and as an ingredient in

gesso applied to prepare a smooth, paintable surface is, as wood, a hygroscopic material that

experiences a considerable dimensional change with the change in moisture content. Swelling

isotherms derived by various authors are shown in Figure 6 and are compared with the plot of

the dimensional change isotherm in the tangential direction of lime wood. In the entire RH

range, the shrinking or swelling of the wood approximates that of the glue.

Gesso was composed of animal glue and an inert filler, ‘the pigment’, usually ground gypsum

or chalk (Witlox & Carlyle, 2005). The ratio of the pigment to the glue is expressed as the

pigment-volume concentration (PVC). Higher PVC means less glue, which means lower

dimensional response of the gesso as a whole to RH variations. The swelling isotherm for the

gessoes can be predicted from that of the glue and PVC values (Michalski, 1991a). The

dimensional change isotherm illustrating the swelling and shrinkage behaviour of a gesso of

PVC = 92% - a typical composition used in panel painting restoration - is compared with the

plots of the dimensional change in the tangential direction in lime wood and of the rabbit-skin

glue in Figure 6.

The gesso changes less than 0.4 % over the 0-90% RH range, which is less than one-tenth that

of pure hide glue which swells as much as 6%. The mismatch in the response of gesso and

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unrestrained wood substrate in the most responsive tangential direction of the wood, can lead

to fracturing of the pictorial layer: upon desiccation, the shrinkage of wood overrides that of

the less responsive gesso which experiences compression, whereas upon wood swelling the

gesso layer experiences tension. If the strain of a wood support goes beyond the critical level,

the gesso can crack or delaminate.

Allowable RH fluctuations for the gesso layer on unrestrained wood panel [sub-heading]

Mecklenburg, Tumosa & Erhard (1998) proposed that, similarly to wood, the yield strain –

established by testing at 0.002 - is the ‘failure criterion’ for the gesso. It should be recalled

that the yield strain is determined in a single cycle loading test as the limit of the elastic range

at which non-recoverable plastic deformation begins. However, the single-cycle failure

criterion needs to be refined by taking into account fatigue failure from multiple RH

fluctuations. Cyclically repeated RH fluctuations in museums and historic interiors may range

from slow seasonal change, caused by an RH decrease in winter due to heating and a return to

a higher RH level in summer, to brief RH fluctuations, even under an hour in duration, arising

from the opening and closing of doors and windows, the flow of visitors, or the operation of

intermittent heating. In earlier work by the author and others in his laboratory (Bratasz, et al.,

2011b; Kozłowski, et al., 2011), a fatigue fracture criterion was determined experimentally.

Specimens simulating historic panel paintings were subjected to cycles of mechanical

stretching to imitate repetitive dimensional changes of unrestrained panel paintings induced

by RH fluctuations in the environment, and the development of cracks in the design layer was

directly monitored. The results obtained allow plotting of an S-N curve where S is the strain

leading to fracture and N is the number of cycles causing the first incidence of fracture at that

strain (Figure 7). The general shape of the fatigue curve is sigmoid, starting from the strain for

fracture in a single cycle or a few cycles, and dropping to a plateau where cyclic strain can be

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tolerated indefinitely. The strain of 0.002 was accepted to be close to that value for any

practical assessment of the risk of damage, as no fracture in the gesso appeared at that strain

after a very large number of 30,000 cycles applied, equivalent to approximately 100 years of

diurnal strain cycles. The fatigue fracture criterion thus established agrees with the single-

cycle yield strain criterion, which is not surprising as fracture growth is not possible without

some plastic yield at the crack tip each cycle. The strain threshold of 0.002 also agrees well

with the fatigue experiments for gesso layers on canvas (Michalski, 1991b).

Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the mismatch in the response of gesso and

unrestrained wood substrate in the most responsive tangential direction of the wood, is the

worst case condition for the fracturing of the entire pictorial layer, that is, the gesso’s yield

determines the safe strain level for the entire glue-gesso-paint structure (Mecklenburg, et al.,

1998). Paints have a smaller dimensional response to changes in RH over most of the RH

range than gesso. Generally, however, paints have yield strains of around 0.005, that is, higher

when compared with that of gesso. Even if paints containing earth colour pigments were

found to be exceptionally weak and prone to separation from the ground, especially in higher

humidity environment, their fragility does not affect the choice of allowable RH variations

(Mecklenburg, 2011).

Using the criterion of gesso’s yield and the assumption of worst-case full response of the

unrestrained wooden substrate in the tangential direction, the magnitude of the critical RH

variations which the gesso layer would endure without damage can be derived. If RH

variations last much longer than the response time of a painted panel, that is, the panel can

reach new values of moisture content and the related strain at each instant of a variation, the

critical RH variations can be determined by simply measuring the change in RH that will

cause a mismatch of 0.002 between the responses of gesso and the tangential direction of the

unrestrained wood, using the swelling isotherms of both materials. The allowable RH

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fluctuations thus derived by using the swelling data determined by the author (Bratasz, et al.,

2011b) are shown in the right axis in Figure 7.

The simple calculation of the critical magnitudes of RH variations was furthered refined by

taking into account the time it takes for moisture to penetrate into a panel so that the impact of

RH variations lasting less than the response time of a painted panel is properly assessed. The

finite element method was used to model the water vapour movement and strain field in a

composite system – an unrestrained, single wood panel coated with a layer of gesso, in

response to cyclic sinusoidal variations in RH (Rachwał, 2012). The numerical technique

employed used a computational mesh of 90x10 cells in gesso and 90x20 cells in wood to

change a continuous diffusion process and moisture-related strain fields in a panel into

discrete ones in the time and spatial domains. The allowable magnitude of an RH variation,

below which physical damage of the gesso layer on the wood does not occur over a selected

time of exposure, was derived as a function of cycle duration, panel thickness and moisture

diffusion configuration that is if the moisture is exchanged through both faces of the panel or

through one of the two faces only to simulate the extreme effect of a pictorial layer

completely impermeable to the moisture flow. The panels were found to respond less and less

significantly when the duration of the fluctuations decreased, which was reflected in the

increasing allowable amplitude of the fluctuations (Figure 8). Also, when the duration of the

cycle went beyond the response time of the panel, its allowable amplitude increased as fewer

cycles would occur in the period of 100 years considered. Further, the dimensional response

of thin painted panels becomes subject to restraint by the layer of gesso. It was established

that the 10 mm panel with two faces permeable to the water vapour flux, subjected to

fluctuation cycles lasting 14 days, represents the ‘absolute’ worst case of the study performed

and the allowable amplitude of fluctuations for this worst case cycle was ±14% RH.

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Finally, the second condition of restraint for gesso is in the parallel-to-grain (longitudinal)

direction in which a wood substrate experiences very small dimensional responses to

moisture. As the diffusion through the thin gesso layer is very fast, the material essentially

responds instantaneously to any RH variations, even when the variations are very short.

However, as the gesso’s moisture coefficient of expansions is very low, the RH changes

required to induce physical damage in gesso exceed allowable magnitudes derived by

considering the response of unrestrained wooden substrate in the tangential direction.

Effect of aging [sub-heading]

An important and frequently raised question has been related to differences in the response

and the damage criteria between ancient and fresh artistic materials. Shrinkage in the

tangential direction of hinoki wood naturally aged in historic buildings in Japan, measured for

an RH drop from 100% to 0%, showed a gradual decline from 7% for the new material to

around 4% for wood aged between 1,000 and 1,600 years (Obataya, 2010). The effect is due

to a decrease in the water vapour adsorption by aged wood – an outcome of the

decomposition of hemicellulose as well as the crystallization of amorphous cellulose which

lead to the decrease in the population of the adsorbing sites (Inagaki, et al., 2010). The water

vapour adsorption for a series of wood specimens of ages ranging from less than one year to

3,700 years was found to decrease very slightly in the oldest specimens (Buck, 1952). The

dimensional response of seventeenth century pine was virtually the same as for fresh wood

(Erhardt, et al., 1996). More experimental data are needed, preferably for wide ranges of

dated specimens of a single species, to determine the effects of time and degradation on the

wood’s dimensional properties, but one errs on the side of caution assuming, for the

assessment of the risk of climate-induced physical damage, that the dimensional response of

historic wood remains similar to that of fresh wood.

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The crystallisation of cellulose brings about a slight increase stiffness of the wood (Erhardt, et

al., 1996; Yokoyama, et al., 2009). A similar tendency was observed for bending and

compressive strengths, as well as hardness. In turn, the depolymerisation of hemicellulose

significantly decreased the critical strain at failure or fragility of the wood measured by

rupture energy. However, the stress-strain curves available of aged wood specimens have

never pointed to a change of their yield strain when compared to fresh materials – so, as

discussed earlier, a yield strain of around 0.005 can be accepted as the damage criterion for

wooden objects irrespective of their age.

Changes in mechanical properties of oil paints occur within years or decades and approach

limiting values after 150 years (Figure 10) (Erhardt, et al., 2005). The major change observed

is loss of much or all of the plastic region upon ageing. Paints retain, however, their elastic

region and a yield strain of about 0.004 determined for the available paint samples that were

up to 20 years old will apply to paints throughout their natural ageing process. While the

decrease in critical strain at failure upon aging makes a paint film more likely to break on

handling and transport, it does not affect the choice of allowable climate variations.

Strains induced by temperature [heading]

The effects of temperature on the materials that constitute painted wooden objects are

analogous to those of relative humidity. Changes in temperature induce dimensional changes,

and stress development in restrained materials subjected to cooling or heating can be treated

in a manner similar to restrained materials subjected to desiccation or humidification,

respectively (Mecklenburg, et al., 1992). The thermal coefficients of dimensional change –

free temperature-induced change in strain per degree Celsius – for wood, glue or paints are

compared with the moisture coefficients of dimensional change in Table 3. Temperature has a

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much smaller effect on wood than RH has. Therefore, thermal expansion or contraction have

a minor effect on the overall dimensional changes of the wood substrate as compared to its

response to moisture. The problem can be the response of the paint layer. The mismatch in the

thermal response of paint and wood substrate in the longitudinal direction of the wood is the

worst case condition for fracturing of the paint layer. The paint becomes particularly

vulnerable to physical damage when the temperature drops below paint’s glass transition

temperature (Tg) which is approximately -10 oC for the oil films (Richard, et al., 1998). Below

Tg, paint undergoes a transition from ductile to very brittle and glassy, and cracks when the

strains reach levels as low as 0.002. This critical strain is reached when the temperature drops

from 22 °C to approximately -19 °C and the failure manifests itself as cracks in the paint

perpendicular to the grain of the wood. Thus, precautions must be taken to avoid exposing

painted wood objects to extreme cold environments, especially in transport situations during

cold winter periods (Saunders, 1991).

The thermal diffusivity in wood is 4-5 orders of magnitude higher than that of water vapour.

Therefore, the response of wood to temperature variations occurring in environments where

the objects are exhibited, stored or transported can be considered instantaneous

as half times of thermal diffusion are of order of minutes for typical 10 mm wooden panel.

Not all effects of low temperature are bad: low temperature also slows water vapour diffusion

and hence increases the time of the wood response to RH variations, as illustrated in Figure 9

(Bratasz, et al., 2011b). The effect can be one of the factors accounting for the frequent

observation that low-temperature storage of wooden works of art – for example in unheated

historic buildings – favours their good preservation.

It should be noted that changes in temperature change the moisture content of materials even

when the ambient RH is held constant. At a constant RH, heating will desiccate materials

somewhat, and cooling will increase their moisture content (Thomson, 1986: 228). Therefore,

15
a panel painting in a microclimate case shrank rapidly due to the thermal contraction when

temperature was lowered, but then the wood slowly swelled as it adsorbed moisture from the

air and silica gel (Richard, 1994).

Further, one has to constantly bear in mind that temperature has a crucial indirect effect: a rise

or fall in temperature causes the lowering or increasing of relative humidity, respectively.

When radiation from the sun, lamps or radiant heaters reaches objects, the consequent

temperature rise causes fall in RH at the surfaces and drying even when the RH of a room or a

show-case remains constant (Camuffo, 1998).

The ‘acclimatization’ concept: target temperature and RH ranges based on

past climatic conditions [heading]

The ‘acclimatisation’ of painted wood to a particular indoor environment within which it has

been preserved has been a well-established concept in the conservation field. Michalski (2009)

coined the term ‘proofed fluctuation’ defined as the largest RH or temperature fluctuation to

which the object has been exposed in the past. As extreme fluctuations are damaging to

painted wood only when they last longer than the response times of various categories of

objects in the collection, a more precise formulation of the concept needs to be based on the

past pattern of extreme fluctuations which takes into account their duration. It was assumed

that the risk of further physical damage (beyond that already accumulated in the past) from

fluctuations smaller than the proofed values is extremely low. If the past fluctuation was

enough to cause fracture, the object has fractured, and the crack opens and closes reducing the

stress which would be otherwise engendered in the undamaged material. Monitoring of a

large crack in a polychrome wooden statue in a church showed rapid cycles of contraction and

expansion caused by shrinkage and swelling of the outer wood layer of the sculpture in

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response to even short microclimate fluctuations (Bratasz, et al., 2007a). The crack reduced

by 25% the tangential stress, which would result from the full restraint of the outher wood

layer in the uncracked statue.

The proofed fluctuation concept eliminates any need for elaborate mechanical response

calculations and offers a risk assessment based just on past climate records. Traditionally, the

‘acclimatisation’ concept was the basis for recommendations that past climate conditions

should be retained as accurately as possible when vulnerable objects are moved from their

usual location for restoration or exhibition (Stolow, 1987). With the growing use of electronic

monitoring systems, long-term surveys to understand RH and temperature levels and

fluctuations have become easier and can be undertaken on a wider scale. The accumulated

data can be mathematically processed to establish more quantitative target microclimates

suitable for the preservation of vulnerable objects, like painted wood, by specifying average

levels of climatic parameters, their seasonal drift as well as bands of tolerable short-term

fluctuations superimposed on these average levels (Bratasz, et al., 2007b). The

‘acclimatisation’ concept was also explicitly expressed in several recommendations and

standards on choice and control of the indoor environmental conditions favouring

conservation of sensitive historic materials, which are discussed in detail below. It should be

stressed at this point that the harmlessness of the pre-existing climatic conditions has been a

key assumption in the approach. The assumption has to be carefully checked in each case, as

physical damage can be cumulative rather than catastrophic, therefore fluctuations, even if not

exceeding the historic levels, can involve risk of damage.

Conservation treatments can erase safety margins of objects achieved by their acclimatisation

to the historic conditions. If cracks in polychrome sculpture, furniture or panel paintings act as

expansion joints relieving stress in the objects, the consolidation of the objects may make

them more vulnerable to climate fluctuations. Treatments can also change, sometime radically,

17
the dimensional and mechanical properties of the original artistic materials. The Romanesque

painted wood ceiling in the church in Zillis, Switzerland, offers an illustration of the severe

damage that consolidation of the paint layer with a wheat starch fixative produced.

Differential expansion and contraction in the wood, paint layer and wheat-starch structure

resulted in shear stresses at the material interfaces, which made the treated paintings

vulnerable to physical damage as a result of climatic variations prevailing in the church

(Bläuer-Böhm, et al., 2001).

The assessment of safety of objects achieved by their acclimatisation to the historic conditions

– especially those most valuable or vulnerable to damage in the collection need to be surveyed

– can be increasingly supported by scientific methods of direct tracing climate-induced

damage: non-invasive, simple, economic and capable of operating in real-world conditions in

museums or historic buildings. The idea is to record an observable related to damage (damage

indicator) of an object in a continuous way or at a specified time interval rather than to

monitor the environment which affects the object. The acoustic emission method, which is

based on monitoring the energy released as sound waves during fracture processes in

materials, has been particularly successful in direct tracing the fracturing intensity in wooden

cultural objects exposed to variations in temperature and RH (Jakieła, et al., 2007, 2008b).

Alternatively, laser techniques, especially electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI)

and speckle decorrelation, have been increasingly used for mapping paint layer damage. They

are non-invasive, portable, and provide detailed, full-field information of the surface of the

object at the micro-level before damage areas have become visually discernible (Ambrosini &

Paoletti, 2004; Castellini, et al., 2008; Bernikola, et al., 2009).

18
Specifications and standards [heading]

Specifications and standards generally contain recommendations on three principal

components by which the indoor climate is statistically represented: long-term average levels

usually over one year, seasonal cycles and short-term fluctuations. Table 4 shows a selection

of standards and specifications for temperature and relative humidity since the 1970s - to

ensure the safe preservation of materials and objects sensitive to moisture-induced damage, to

which painted wood belongs. The earlier history and development of recommendations for the

climate in museums is described by Erhardt, et al. (2007).

The most general tendency is the gradual development of such recommendations from single-

value targets and conservative tolerances to more rational, science-based approaches allowing

seasonal changes and broader short-term fluctuations. The specifications have gradually

recognised that the recommended temperature does not need to be at a universal value of

around 20 oC dictated by human comfort. The widest range was specified by the National

Trust in the UK in which the lower limit of the allowable range was set at 5 oC to prevent the

risk of frozen pipes.

The specifications reflect a general belief that RH should be as near constant as possible and

that the middle RH region (close to 50%) is optimum being close to annual outdoor average in

those parts of the world where guidelines were written. However, there is also awareness that

objects stored for significant periods of time in environments where the average annual RH

deviates from the central value of 50% RH might have become acclimatised to the conditions.

Therefore, any change from a particular historic climatic environment may be problematic,

even though the new conditions may appear optimum for long-term preservation.

The same approach is to the RH variations of various time scales from a yearly cycle to short-

term fluctuations. Authors of the early recommendations on the narrow ranges of RH

variations stated openly that they were based on what could be expected of air-conditioning

19
systems rather than on any knowledge of what objects could tolerate without damage

(Thomson, 1986: 268-269). With the growing understanding of the effects of climate

conditions on materials and objects, broader ranges of RH variations have been increasingly

accepted. The allowable ranges were also recommended to be based on not ideal historic

conditions if the collection survived well in them, the assumption in such specification being

that the decision on the harmlessness or otherwise of historic conditions is made by

conservation professionals carrying out a condition survey for the most vulnerable and/or

valuable objects. The ASHRAE specifications went one step further by specifying five classes

of climate quality and explicitly providing which climate related risks are avoided in each

class and which are present (Museums, 2007). These specifications also state that the long-

term RH level can be either 50% (for international consistency) or it can be the local historic

average RH (for the museum's permanent collection).

Conclusions [heading]

The most general conclusion from the scientific research and preventive conservation practice

discussed in this review is that the increasing criticism of the fundamentalist concept of the

strict control of museum climate has led, since the 1980s, to more relaxed specifications

which have allowed individual long-term targets for specific collections, seasonal changes

and broader ranges of short-term fluctuations.

Each painted wood object with its individual original structure and conservation history,

acclimatised to a particular environment in which it has been exposed, needs individual levels

and ranges of temperature and RH. However, the body of scientific evidence reviewed

indicates that moderate variations within the approximate range 50 ± 15% were safe. This safe

range was derived using the extremes of conservative criteria of the gesso’s yield and fatigue

fracture, and assumptions of worst case wooden substrate response. As such, the range

20
provides a cautious ‘baseline’ for the environmental standards for safe display of painted

wood. This baseline can be re-defined when the understanding of critical strain levels is

refined with advances in experimental research on physical fracture in painted wood.

The quoted allowable RH variation corresponds to the class of control B of the ASHRAE

classification in Table 4. This class of control is often the only possible moderate-cost strategy

in historic buildings – also in use by museums – of limited potential for tighter climate

control.

Further broadening of the allowable variations might result from the observations that objects

survived remarkably well in conditions which were far from ‘ideal’. Therefore, climate

specifications based on the ‘acclimatisation’ concept remain a useful tool, especially when

electronic monitoring systems can provide long-term past climate records in remarkable detail.

The two approaches can be also combined so that maintaining the past microclimate in terms

of levels, seasonal cycles and fluctuations of temperature and RH is recommended on the one

hand, but the ‘absolute’ allowable variations based on the mechanical behaviour of paintings

are defined on the other. As a result very stable past microclimates will not lead to an

argument for unnecessarily strict future targets for climate control.

The direct monitoring of painted wood by acoustic and optical methods to trace climate-

induced damage at a micro-level has become a relatively recent tool for the in-situ assessment

of the harmfulness or otherwise of a particular climate to a specific object. Though still

regarded by many as curiosities of research laboratories, the author believes that with growing

availability of portable instruments and sensors direct monitoring methods will become

important tools for climate control in museums and historic buildings.

Acknowledgements

21
This review article was prepared as a part of the habilitation of the author in the Jerzy Haber

Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow.

22
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Figure captions [heading]

31
1. General water vapour adsorption and desorption isotherms of wood at 24 oC calculated

using four empirical equations.

32
2. The average dimensional change isotherms corresponding to the adsorption and

desorption of water vapour by wood at 24 oC calculated by fitting the data for 21 wood

species (Bratasz, et al., 2010). The confidence bands are given by the dotted lines.

3. The stress-strain curves for lime wood at 50% RH and 24 oC. The yield strains are

indicated by the arrows. These are considerably lower than the strains required to cause

the wood to break (author own measurements).

33
4. The effect of rates of loading on the stress-strain relationships at 50% RH and 23 oC for

tangentially cut poplar (Mecklenburg, 2008).

34
5. The domains of allowable RH fluctuations for lime wood (Jakieła, et al., 2008a),

cottonwood (Mecklenburg, et al., 1998) fully restrained in their tangential directions

and Japanese cypress (Bratasz, et al., 2008) fully restrained in radial direction. Dotted

line indicates starting RH for which the restrained object is at zero stress.

35
6. The swelling isotherms for various animal glues are compared with that of a gesso and

the intermediate swelling isotherm of lime wood in its tangential direction.

36
7. Strain, and corresponding amplitude of RH variation, leading to fracture in gesso versus

number of cycles to cause fracture at that strain (Bratasz, et al., 2011b; Kozłowski, et al.,

2011). The most responsive tangential direction in lime wood was considered and each

RH variation was assumed to cause a full response of an unrestrained panel. The

amplitude of RH variation was calculated assuming a starting point of 50% RH.

37
8. The allowable amplitude of the sinusoidal RH cycles at 20 oC as a function of the cycle

duration for two panel thicknesses of 10 and 40 mm and the moisture flow through one

or both faces of a panel (Rachwał, 2012). Allowable is defined as 100 years of continual

cycling without occurrence of fracture.

38
9. The allowable amplitude of the sinusoidal RH cycles as a function of the cycle duration

for an unrestrained 10 mm panel thicknesses and a moisture exchange through one face

at 5 and 20 oC (Bratasz, et al., 2011b). The most responsive tangential direction in wood

was considered.

39
10. Stress-strain curves measured for paint films of lead white in cold-pressed linseed oil

that are one and 10 years old, and later curves extrapolated from the measured curve

(Erhardt, et al., 2005).

Author [heading]

ŁUKASZ BRATASZ graduated in physics from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow,

Poland in 1996, and received a PhD in 2002 from the same university. In the same year, he

joined the staff of the Jerzy Haber Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry, Polish

Academy of Sciences, Krakow where he is a research fellow. Since 2007, he is also a

scientific consultant in the National Museum in Krakow. His research focuses on risk of

physical damage to historic objects induced by changes in environmental parameters as well

as non-destructive methods of direct tracing damage development. He is member of Technical

Committee 346 ‘Conservation of Cultural Property’ of the European Committee for

Standardisation CEN. Address: Jerzy Haber Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry,

Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Niezapominajek 8, 30-239 Kraków, Poland. E-mail:

ncbratas@cyf-kr-edu.pl

40
Table 1

The coefficients of the polynomial approximating the average swelling and shrinkage isotherms. The upper and lower confidence bands for

confidence level of 0.95 are given in brackets.

a0 a1 a2 [*10-2] a3 [*10-4]
swelling tangential 0 5.13 (3.68;6.59) -7.02 (-3.90;-10.13) 7.86 ( 5.96;9.76)
swelling radial 0 2.96 (1.79;4.13) -2.84 (-0.35;-5.34) 3.11 ( 1.59;4.63)
shrinkage tangential 0 5.41 (3.66;7.17) 0.12 ( 3.98;-3.74) 0.16 (-2.23;2.55)
shrinkage radial 0 3.47 (1.97;4.97) -0.28 ( 3.01;-3.57) -0.20 (-2.24;1.83)

Table 2

Examples of stress fields, irreversible deformation and fracture in wooden objects which can be understood in terms of RH fluctuations plus

various forms of restraint.

Object Source of restraint Alteration Reference

Mona Lisa, Leonardo da
Vinci, 1503-1505, oil on
wood, Paris, Musée du
Louvre.
Laboratory model of a
thinned panel painting
reinforced with a rigid
wooden support system –
a cradle.
The framing of the painting. Deformation of a panel induced Dureisseix,
by the framing. 2006
The rigid construction of a Cradle-related damage of a panel Brewer,
cradle composed of fixed and – undulating, washboard profile 1997
sliding battens. between the battens and
compression damage along the
battens.

41
The Mazarin chest, around
1640, Japanese lacquer,
London, Victoria and
Albert Museum.
Tables consisting of
carved and gilded wooden
frames, supporting marble
tops, London, Chiswick
House, English Heritage.
Bäty-Witte organ, 1869,
Delft, the Netherlands, the
Waalse Kerk.
Laboratory replicas of
panel paintings, poplar
wood.
Altarpiece, Ruprecht
Potsch, 1516-1517,
polychrome and gilded
wood, Rocca Pietore,
Italy, the church of Santa
Maria Maddalena.
Table 3 Thermal and moisture coefficients of expansion
Assembly of cross grained
wooden elements in the cleated
(hashibami) construction of the
lid with the cleats acting as a
restraint to the planks.
Construction made of several
blocks of wood glued and
nailed together before being
carved.
Elaborate construction of
wooden wind drawer, pipes
and cabinet from parts glued
together.
Waterproofed face of a panel,
to simulate the paint layer, acts
as an internal restraint to
dimensional change of the
opposite uncoated face during
an abrupt change in RH.
Dimensional changes in the
external layers of massive
elements in response to fast RH
variations due to intermittent
heating operating in the church
are restrained by the wood core
beneath.
Deformation of the lid, cracks in Bratasz, et
the wood and lacquer layer. al., 2008
Cracks along the joints, also in the Knight &
gesso overlaying the joints, owing Thickett,
to differential movement of the 2005
blocks.
Cracks along the joints, cracks at Schellen,
the wind holes of the drawer, 2002
cracks in the wooden pipes at the
tuning caps.
Cupping concave to the drier face, Vici, et al.,
which disappears as moisture 2006
content becomes uniform across
the panel, unless excessive stress
causes permanent deformation
(compression set).
Deep cracks in the radial direction Bratasz, et
in massive elements sculpted from al., 2007a
cylindrical tree trunks.
42
 Material Thermal coefficient of Moisture coefficient of
o -1
expansion [ C ] expansion at 50% [%RH-1]
White oak - longitudinal 0.0000038 <0.00002
White oak - radial 0.00003 0.00019
White oak - tangential 0.0000385 0.00033
Oil paints 0.00001
0.000052
Oil paints (earth colours) 0.00002
Gesso 0.00002 0.000025
Hide glue 0.000025 0.0004
Copper 0.000017 0.0

Table 4

Selection of international standards and specifications since the 1970s for temperature and relative humidity to ensure safe preservation of

painted wood

Year Source or Institution Temperature RH [%] Remarks Reference

issuing the specification [oC]
Long- Seasonal Short-term
term cycle fluctuations
average

1978 Garry Thompson’s book 19 (winter) 50 or 55 - ±5 Class 1 - appropriate for major national Thomson,
‘The Museum museums, old or new, and also for all 1986
up to 24
Environment’ important new museum buildings
(summer)

reasonably 40 - 70 Class 2 – aimed at avoiding major

constant to dangers whilst keeping costs and
alteration to a minimum, for example,

43
 stabilise RH climate control in historic houses and
churches may have to be limited to class
2 specifications

1979 Canadian Conservation 21 between 38 - 55 ±2 The allowed seasonal changeover of the Lafontaine,
Institute 47 and 53 set points is 1 oC and 5% RH per month, 1979
(seasonal
respectively.
variation
from 20 to Occasional variations of ±5% RH are
25 allowed) tolerable if these are the exception.

50 – 65 (alarm levels The recommended strategy involved

1994 National Trust 5 - 22 58 Staniforth,
1) control of RH to as constant level as et al., 1994
possible principally by adjusting heat
40 – 75 (alarm levels input.
2)

1999 American Society of 15 - 25 50 no ±5 Class of control AA – No risk of Museums,

Heating, Refrigerating, mechanical damage to most artifacts and 2007
or
and Air-Conditioning paintings.
Engineers Inc. historic
(ASHRAE) yearly no ±10 Class of control A – Small risk of
average mechanical damage to high-vulnerability
+10 in ±5 artifacts; no mechanical risk to most
summer artifacts, paintings.
-10 in
winter

+10 in ±10 Class of control B – Moderate risk of

summer mechanical damage to high-vulnerability
artifacts; tiny risk to most paintings.
-10 in
winter

44
 25 - 75 Class of control C - High risk of
mechanical damage to high-vulnerability
artifacts; moderate risk to most paintings.

below 75 Class of control D - High risk of sudden

or cumulative mechanical damage to
most artifacts and paintings because of
low-humidity fracture.

2006 National Trust 5 - 22 50 - 65 - - The earlier fixed set point of 58% RH The
was replaced with a target range. The RH National
set point should be adjustable in each Trust,
room and depend on the conditions to 2006
which the collection has acclimatised.

2007 Smithsonian Institution 21 45 - ±8 Erhardt, et

al., 2007

2009 National Museum 16 - 25 40 - 60 Specifications for the majority of objects NMDC,

Directors’ Conference containing hygroscopic material. 2009
UK However, panel paintings are listed
among more sensitive materials which
require specific and tight RH control.

2010 European standard EN no historic historic ±10 * This cycle is obtained by calculating, EN 15757,
15757:2010 specification yearly seasonal or target for each RH reading, the central moving 2010
average cycle* average (MA) which is the mean of RH
range
readings taken in 15 days before and
calculated
after the time at which the average is
from the
computed.
historic
climate** ** The lower and upper limits of the
target range of RH fluctuations are
(whichever

45
greater) determined as the 7th and 93rd
percentiles of the fluctuations recorded in
the monitoring period, respectively.
A fluctuation is calculated relative to
MA, i.e. the seasonal cycle rather than
the yearly average value.

46
47