Moisture Issue in Historical Masonry

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to participate in a Special Issue of Minerals focused on the Moisture Issue in Historical Masonry.

The topic is of crucial importance given the growing attention to Cultural Heritage reserved in most of the national and international research policy; it involves those research fields focused on building materials, architectural conservation, and moisture transport phenomena. Therefore the approach ought to be strongly interdisciplinary and contributes by conservation scientist, geologist, chemist, conservators are particularly welcome.

Moisture presence and historical masonry constitute a challenge, which any conservator faced in her/his personal career. The task is in promoting new ideas and discussion on a broad topic: from the causes which generate the presence of moisture into masonries, to the decay mechanisms with special regard to soluble salt transport, to the design of methods and monitoring used in limiting the moisture content inside the microstructure of the masonry materials.

Traditional methods for the detection of moisture in masonry are often micro-destructive or not reliable in the presence of soluble salts, as usual in historic masonry. In recent years several Non Destructive Techniques (NDT) for moisture detection have been developed and successfully tested for this application. Sharing novel findings in this field contributes to advance the conservation practice.

Even when a sound diagnosis is made, tackling moisture related problems in historic buildings is a complex task. The effectiveness of the used methods is often unclear and influenced by several factors (such as properties of the product, masonry characterisics and conditions, quality of the execution, etc.). In this case, the assessment and the monitoring of the moisture content in masonry can support the conservation practice by providing a sound evaluation of the effectveness of an intervention.

The Minerals Special Issue will cover novel research studies that can put new light on a broad range of relevant topics. Some suggestions are provided on the following topics:

• Damage mechanisms due to moisture presence into masonry microstructure
• Susceptibility of building materials to moisture induced decay pattern
• Water transport phenomena into masonry materials
• Impact of climate change to moisture presence into masonry
• Assessment and monitoring of moisture presence into historical masonry
• Methods to mitigate the moisture-related decay into historical masonry

Dr. Antonio Sansonetti
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Rosina
Dr. Barbara Lubelli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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