Thermal Reading of Texts Buried in Historical Bookbindings.

In the manufacture of ancient books, it was quite common to insert written scraps belonging to earlier library material into bookbindings. For scholars like codicologists and paleographers, it is extremely important to have the possibility of reading the text lying on such scraps without dismantling the book. In this regard, in this paper, we report on the detection of these texts by means of infrared (IR) pulsed thermography (PT), which, in recent years, has been specifically proven to be an effective tool for the investigation of Cultural Heritage.

Thermographic Imaging in Cultural Heritage: A Short Review.

Over the recent period, there has been an increasing interest in the use of pulsed infrared thermography (PT) for the non-destructive evaluation of Cultural Heritage (CH). Unlike other techniques that are commonly employed in the same field, PT enables the depth-resolved detection of different kinds of subsurface features, thus providing helpful information for both scholars and restorers. Due to this reason, several research activities are currently underway to further improve the PT effectiveness.

In-Plane Thermal Diffusivity Measurements of Polyethersulfone Woven Textiles by Infrared Thermography.

Lock-in thermography was applied to the measurement of the in-plane thermal diffusivity of three polyethersulfone (PES) textiles characterized by different weaving pattern as well as different mass density of interlacing fibers. The experimental results showed that the in-plane thermal diffusivity in each direction decreased with the increase of the fibers' linear mass density, thus leading to an anisotropic behavior of the thermal diffusivity in the specimen where PES fibers with different density were interlaced. A new theoretical model for the study of the heat diffusion in textiles was specifically developed and, thereafter, employed for the analysis of the experimental results.