Performance of wood in the Franja partisan hospital

ABSTRACT

Wood is one of the most important construction materials and its use in building applications has further expanded in recent decades. In order to enable even more extensive and reliable use of wood, factors affecting wood’s service life need to be understood. It is well known that fungal degradation of wood is predominantly affected by moisture content (MC) and temperature (T). In order to elucidate the influence of these two factors, long-term monitoring of T, relative humidity (RH) and wood MC was carried out at the WWII partisan hospital Franja, Slovenia. The results clearly showed that fungal degradation of wood is influenced by MC and T. A model to predict brown and white/soft rot decay of wood was applied to predict the expected service lives of different building components of the hospital cabins. The predicted times until onset of decay were well in accordance with findings made during visual assessments and drill resistance measurements at this historical site. The monitoring concept in combination with a mathematical decay prediction model can provide accurate data and valuable guidance for building modern structures and maintaining the cultural heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Water
• moisture
• service life
• degradation
• buildings
• wood decay fungi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Miha Humar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9963-5011

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the support of the Slovenian Research Agency [projects L4-5517, L4-7547, programme P4-0015] and the infrastructural centre [IC LES PST 0481-09]. Part of the research was also supported by the project Tigr4smart.This work was supported by European Cooperation in Science and Technology: [Grant Number COST FP1303]; Javna Agencija za Raziskovalno Dejavnost RS: [Grant Number L4-5517, L4-7547,P4-0015]; IC LES PST: [Grant Number 0481-09].