To coat or not to coat? The maintenance of Cor‐Ten® sculptures

Abstract

Since the mid sixties Cor-Ten 1 steel became one of the most famous materials for outdoor sculptures until today. This material was used by many artists because of its good weather resistance. Due to not always suitable ranges of application many significant problems in the field of conservation appeared.These were surveyed in a project of the study programme 'Object Conservation' at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart with special focus on the material and its protective rust layers, the premises for its protection, different cases of significant damage and their causes, the potential of preventive conservation and practised interventive methods.Although it seems to be in some way a contradiction in itself to coat a weathering steel, this has often been done in hands-on conservation to overcome corrosion problems. Therefore different coating materials already in use for outdoor metal sculptures were tested on Cor-Ten coupons in the framework of the CONSIST project in the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (DBM). Cor-Ten B samples were covered with different coating materials such as: microcrystalline waxes, waxes used in technical corrosion protection, an acrylic resin and a polyurethane resin. The sheets were then weathered for 2 months in a climate chamber with a relative high humidity (but also drying cycles) and a climate chamber with a periodic changing relative high rate of SO 2 gas and humidity using standard protocols developed at DBM in earlier projects. The effectiveness of the protective function of each coating materials is compared, consequences for practical applications discussed.

Modeling the Effect of Oxygen on Photopolymerization Kinetics

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] As evident from these many applications, photoinitiated polymerization has many benefits over other polymerization processes including that it is fast, uses little energy, readily occurs at room temperature, and is low cost. [3,6,8,9] The environmental benefit of photopolymerizations is that the monomer is often polymerized in bulk, eliminating the need for environmentally hazardous solvents. Another advantage is that these polymerizations are spatially and temporally controllable since the initiating light is resolvable in both space and time.…”

Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography for Non-Destructive Testing of Protection Coatings on Metal Substrates

“…The thinnest coating that could be applied was greater than 6 µm by brushing it onto the metal. The theoretically expected value for the layer thickness t can be determined as follows [35]:…”

Triazine‐Based Type‐II Photoinitiating System for Free Radical Photopolymerization: Mechanism, Efficiency, and Modeling

“…[1] Impressive progresses have been made since and photoinduced synthesis of materials is nowadays a large-scale industrial area. Among the large number of fields covered by this technology, radical photopolymerization has emerged as an attractive process for a wide range of applications, such as coatings, varnishes, dental materials, graphic arts, laser direct imaging, holographic recording, etc.…”

“…Among the large number of fields covered by this technology, radical photopolymerization has emerged as an attractive process for a wide range of applications, such as coatings, varnishes, dental materials, graphic arts, laser direct imaging, holographic recording, etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6] Indeed, light irradiation provides numerous advantages over classic thermal operations: spatio-temporal control of the reaction, room temperature, solvent-free process, cost reduction … Light initiation of such a process is enabled…”