Human-Induced Vibrations on Museum Artefacts:  Literature Review and Calculation Example

Abstract

Museums and artworks are visited by thousands of people every day and they are usually located in the city centers, often near train and subway stations. Moreover, renovations of art galleries are sometimes necessary in order to improve their usability. For these reasons, visitors, construction work and rail and road traffic constitute the most common sources of vibration in art galleries. Vibrations may potentially interfere with the usability of art objects and may be potentially dangerous for their preservation. Despite these issues, the researchers are mainly focused on mitigating the risk related to earthquake-induced vibrations, while the studies on the vulnerability of artistic heritage exposed to human-induced vibrations are still few and fragmented. Reference guidelines or codes to address this problem are not available at the moment. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to propose a literature review on that topic and to provide an example of calculation for a selected case study. This work is conducted in the framework of a larger study with the goal of understanding these phenomena and filling the lack of proper guidelines, for example, setting values of acceptable human-induced vibration levels.

Vulnerability Assessment of Art Collections: the National Archaeological Museum “Gaio Cilnio Mecenate” in Arezzo (Italy)

“…For art collections exhibited in museums, the dynamic excitations represent a main threat. They can be induced by natural events, such as earthquakes, or by human actions, such as traffic, shipment, concerts, or construction works [14,15]. The vulnerability of artworks to dynamic excitations largely varies depending on their type [4,[16][17][18], and their properties [19,20], such as material, shape, dimension, age, and state of conservation.…”