Natural and artificial ageing for evaluating waterproofing treatments for marble

Abstract

Exposure of samples to artificial ageing is commonly carried out to test the durability of natural and artificial stones and the effectiveness of products used for their conservation. Correlations between artificial and natural ageing, however, are not always well understood mainly because the former can only try to simulate, in a faster but simplified way, the effects of the many causes interacting ín natural environments. In the present study, marble samples from Carrara and Proconnesion quarries, were treated with four waterproofing products (or mixtures of products) and exposed to artificial ageing while an analogous set was exposed outdoor, in the town center of Rome for two years. Several physical parameters were measured before and after the ageing and the experimental results enabled us to compare the effects produced by the different types of ageing and to estimate the correlations between them. As for the durability of the tested waterproofing products, the two systems are in good agreement even if two years of natural ageing resulted to be slightly more severe than 33 days of exposure to saline fog, to UV radiation and to wetting-drying cycles