Fracture Study in the Restoration of a Marble Statue

As part of the “Adam” statue restoration project at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, this work focused on the experimental study of interfacial creep crack growth between different adhesives and Carrara marble. By performing Brazil-nut tests under monotonical compression, interfacial behavior from thermoplastics or thermoset-thermoplastic combinations were investigated under different mode mixties. The mixed thermoplastic/thermosetting specimens exhibited a good combination of slow crack growth rates and service periods. The effect of different pin materials to marble joints were also investigated. A protocol has been developed to probe sub-critical crack growth in restored stone statues. Findings from this work showed that fracture mechanics could provide essential clues to the estimation of critical stresses and crack growth behavior in historic artifacts.