Characterization of aged textile for archeological shelters through thermal, optical and mechanical tests

Abstract The paper deals with the measurements of thermal, optical and mechanical properties for aged textiles. The use of textiles for building temporary shelters is a widespread common practice for the protection of archaeological sites. Temporary shelters often become long-term structures, because of the necessity of prolonged excavation and the need to gather sufficient resources to design and build a permanent shelter. Materials and structures of temporary shelters are often less expensive (and, unfortunately, less durable) than permanent ones: their major advantages consist in their flexibility, modularity, easy and fast assembly and dismounting, reversibility, low impact on the soil and ruins and impermeability. Therefore, the authors studied the effects of ageing on a very common and low cost textile for temporary shelters in a polluted environment through the heating test, reflectance spectrometry, colorimetry and uniaxial mechanical tests, with the aim of exploring the potential applications of fabrics that usually do not fit with high mechanical stress but have a widespread use for small structures. The authors used an integration of non-destructive tests in three ageing conditions and, due to their destructivity, they applied the mechanical tests only in the initial and final ageing condition.