The preservation of world cultural heritage is a key issue for maintaining national identity and understanding the exchanges among civilizations throughout history. Cultural heritage (CH) artefacts that are based on paper, textiles or wood are prone to biological attack under improper conservation conditions. The application of ionizing radiation for the disinfection of CH artefacts has been successfully demonstrated in recent years, with the participation of museums and libraries. The wider use of this technique requires conclusively establishing that irradiation does not lead to unacceptable changes in the functional or decorative properties of the artefact and that its authenticity is not compromised. The CRP will focus on evaluating the effect of irradiation on the functional properties of such artefacts’ base materials and minor constituents, as well as on post-irradiation effects and appropriate irradiation procedures for wider use of the technique.
Wider acceptance and use of radiation processing techniques for conservation and consolidation of Cultural Heritage Artefacts.
1. Understand the effect of specific irradiation conditions on the functional properties of base materials present in cultural artefacts to establish appropriate irradiation conditions for treating CH artefacts.2. Develop new radiation curable resins with enhanced compatibility with cultural heritage artefacts and at low radiation doses3. Establish appropriate procedures for irradiation of artefacts, including dose mapping, dose limit ratio and simulation techniques to predict dose uniformity during the irradiation process.
Achievements of this CRP are organised according to the different areas of intervention in conservation/preservation of CH artefacts explored by CRP participants.
The areas of intervention identified are: New Materials, Disinfection, Consolidation and Computational Dosimetry and Experiments.
1 New Materials
New polymer and polymer-based materials were prepared and optimised looking for convenient consolidation of CH artefacts of natural and inorganic nature with considerable degree of degradation.
- PDMS-based hybrids with biocidal activity and optimised inorganic content
- Radiation-induced nano-materials and their composites
- New formulations of wood polymer composites
- New formulation of grafted fibres and fabrics
- Hydrogels were prepared for cleaning
2 Disinfection
- Successful demonstration to different kind of collections and materials
- Irradiation parameters (dose rate, environmental conditions, bio-burden analyses)
- Side-effects depends on the initial state of the treated materials.
- Up to 10 kGy, no significant changes on cellulose-based artefacts.
3 Consolidation
- New ways to applied in-situ consolidation - new formulations of resins considering sustainable and ethics on conservation.
- Styrene free resin has been studied
- Dose rate of irradiation in the efficiency of the in-situ polymerisation
.4 Computational dosimetry and experiments
- Software toolkit for the simulation of interaction of ionisation radiation
- Chemical composition of different irradiated objects were collected.
- Comparisons of simulated and experimental results.
- Mathematical model for mechanical parameters prediction.
The preservation of world cultural heritage is a key issue for maintaining national identity and understanding the exchanges among civilizations throughout history. Cultural heritage (CH) artefacts that are based on paper, textiles or wood are prone to biological attack under improper storage conditions. The IAEA has already published “Use of Ionizing Radiation for Tangible Cultural Heritage Conservation; IAEA Radiation technology Series No.6” in 2017, and this book successfully demonstrated the application of ionizing radiation for the preservation of CH artefacts. The CRP “Developing Radiation Treatment Methodologies and New Resin Formulations for Consolidation and Preservation of Archived Materials and Cultural Heritage Artefacts” is very successful with the participation of 20 Member States and provides the understanding of the effect of specific irradiation conditions on functional properties of CH artefacts. The previous CRP established appropriate irradiation methodologies and supported the development of new radiation curable resins with enhanced compatibility with CH artefacts. Since the current CRP is going to close, direction of new CRP is discussed in this TM. The new CRP will focus on the wider use of this technique with more participation of end-users and on evaluating the effect of irradiation on the functional properties of CH artefacts.