Special Issue of Heritage «Effects of Salts on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Decay and Measures», deadline 30th June 2021

Special Issue of Heritage «Effects of Salts on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Decay and Measures», deadline 30th June 2021

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit your work to this Special Issue of Heritage focused on “Effects of salts on the conservation of Cultural Heritage: decay and measures”. Salt weathering is considered as one of the most frequent and serious problem that affects porous materials used on Cultural Heritage. The damage caused by the presence of soluble salts can endanger, in the case of cultural heritage, the historic-artistic value of the property, since it is a non-renewable resource with unique and irreplaceable value or even put its perpetuation at risk, due to the development in the worse scenarios of structural problems. For this reason, achieve a deep knowledge about the causes that favor the damage caused by this agent, and also knowing and understanding the physical operation and the efficacy of the different techniques that are currently available for salts removal or for minimizing their impact, are both crucial aspects to achieve an effective protection.

According to the above considerations, this Special Issue is based on reviews and researches focused on analysing the different aspects related to the damage that this agent can cause when crystallizing in a material and the strategies or techniques that can reduce or remove their damage. In particular, this Issue covers the following topics of interest:

  • Source of salts.
  • Transport phenomena in porous media.
  • Crystallization pressure in the built environment.
  • Environmental conditions that promote the phase change of salts.
  • Influence of previous surface treatments (for example: consolidation) on the degree of damage caused by salts.
  • Improvements in protocols and procedures of current treatments.
  • New sustainable desalination strategies or techniques.
  • Non-invasive analytical techniques to monitor salt weathering.
  • Case studies dealing with salt weathering and/or their treatment.

This special issue will also be open to other topics, which have not been recorded in the previous points specifically, but are related to the main topic of this issue (salt weathering).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2021.

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