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

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 of 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 on their flexibility, modularity, easy and fast assembly and dismounting, reversibility, low impact on the soil and ruins, impermeability. Therefore, the authors studied the effects of ageing on a very common and low cost textile for temporary shelters in a polluted environment by heating test, reflectance spectrometry, colorimetry and uniaxial mechanical tests, with the aim to explore the potential applications of fabrics that that usually do not fit with high mechanical stress but have a widespread use for small structures. The authors used an integration of not destructive tests in three ageing conditions and because of their destructivity, the mechanical test in the initial and final aging condition.