Quantitative evaluation of deterioration in west wind-room in the Palace Museum

Abstract

The Palace Museum in Beijing is a world cultural heritage site. Surviving nearly 600 years, heritage buildings in the Palace Museum have been deteriorated by salting out, exfoliation, cracking and so on. For the purpose of quantitative evaluation on current environment risks and proposing conservation approaches, heat and moisture transfer on buildings was simulated by a numerical model and the West Wind-room in the Hall of Mental Cultivation (Yangxin Dian) in the Palace Museum was taken as example. The results indicated that to reduce freezing-thawing cycles, the indoor temperature should be increased during December to early February. Indoor temperature and humidity should be controlled to a more stable and lower level to decrease the damaging from salt crystallization and hydration. And attention should be paid to more salting-out resulted by evaporation increase in spring and autumn. The results will provide support to environment control of Chinese traditional buildings.