Abstract
Historic sandstone structures carry an inheritance, or a ‘memory’, of past stresses that the stone has undergone since its placement in a façade. This inheritance, which conditions present day performance, may be made up of long-term exposure to a combination of low magnitude background environmental factors (for example, salt weathering, temperature and moisture cycling) and, superimposed upon these, less frequent but potentially high magnitude events or ‘exceptional’ factors (for example, lime rendering, severe frost events, fire). The impact of complex histories on the decay pathways of historic sandstone is not clearly understood, but this paper seeks to improve that understanding through the use of a laboratory ‘process combination’ study. Blocks of quartz sandstone (Peakmoor, from NW England) were divided into subsets that experienced different histories (lime rendering and removal, fire and freeze–thaw cycles in isolation and combination) that reflected the event timeline of a real medieval sandstone monument in NE Ireland, Bonamargy Friary (McCabe et al. 2006b). These subsets were then subject to salt weathering cycles using a 10% salt solution of NaCl and MgSO4 that represents the ‘every-day’ stress environment of, for example, sandstone structures in coastal, or polluted urban, location. Block response to salt weathering was monitored by collecting, drying and weighing the debris that was released as blocks were immersed in the salt solution at the beginning of each cycle. The results illustrate the complexity of the stone decay system, showing that seemingly small variations in stress history can produce divergent response to salt weathering cycles. Applied to real-world historic sandstone structures, this concept may help to explain the spatial and temporal variability of sandstone response to background environmental factors on a single façade, and encourage conservators to include the role of stress inheritance when selecting and implementing conservation strategies.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Gill Alexander in the Cartographic Department of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast, for the preparation of figures. This research was undertaken as part of a Department of Employment and Learning (DEL) funded postgraduate award.
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McCabe, S., Smith, B.J. & Warke, P.A. Preliminary observations on the impact of complex stress histories on sandstone response to salt weathering: laboratory simulations of process combinations. Environ Geol 52, 251–258 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-006-0531-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-006-0531-7