Evaluation of wood material response to relative humidity: the Archaeological Museum of Priverno (Latina, Italy)

This work aims at providing a microclimate characterization of the Archaeological Museum of Priverno (Latina, Italy) using indoor environmental observations recorded over a 15-months monitoring period. A particular emphasis was given to the influence of relative humidity (RH) on physical damages in valuable wooden ceilings. For this purpose, RH values were calculated at the boundary layer between air and wooden surface at different time scale and, then, compared with the hourly evolution of crack width. It was found that a widening of cracks in wooden panels occurred mainly in summer, when low RH values related to high temperature were recorded. This means that an adequate control of indoor climate is necessary to reduce degradation phenomena.