Study of consolidating materials applied on wood by hyperspectral imaging

The focus of this study was addressed to investigate the potentiality of HyperSpectral Imaging (HSI) in the monitoring of commercial consolidant products applied on wood samples. Poplar (Populus Sp.) and walnut (Juglans Regia L.) were chosen for the consolidant application. Both traditional and innovative products were selected, based on acrylic, epoxy and aliphatic compounds. Wood samples were stresses by freeze/thaw cycles in order to cause material degradation. Then the consolidants were applied under vacuum. The samples were finally artificially aged for 168 hours in a solar box chamber. The samples were acquired in the SWIR (1000-2500 nm) range by SISUChema XL™ device (Specim, Finland) after 168 hours of irradiation. As comparison, color measurement was also used as economic, simple and noninvasive technique to evaluate the deterioration and consolidation effects on wood. All data were then processed adopting a chemometric approach finalized to define correlation models, HSI based, between consolidating materials, wood species and short time ageing effects.