2019/02/08 by David Watkinson, David E. Watkinson, Melanie B. Rimmer +3
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · #Building materials and conservation #Conservation Techniques and Studies #Corrosion Behavior and Inhibition
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00393630.2018.1565006
crossref issued 2019/02/08 · crossref published 2019/02/08 · crossref published-online 2019/02/08 · openalex publication_date 2019/02/08 · crossref created 2019/02/09 · crossref deposited 2019/10/14 · crossref published-print 2019/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29 · crossref indexed 2026/08/03
This study examined the impact of relative humidity (RH) on the corrosion rate of 129 archaeological iron nails from two sites. Oxygen consumption of individual nails in controlled RH was used as a corrosion rate proxy to deliver quantitative data on corrosion rate as a function of RH. This was negligible at 20% RH, slow up to 40% RH for both sites, and increased rapidly at 60% RH for Roman nails from Caerleon (Wales) and at 70% RH for medieval nails from Billingsgate (London). The nails were digested and their chloride content was determined and related to their oxygen consumption at specific RH values. While a generic pattern of corrosion as a function of chloride was identified, for any single concentration of chloride corrosion rate was not predictable. Desiccation is in common use to control post-excavation corrosion of archaeological iron; quantifying how differing levels of desiccation changed corrosion rate provided a scaled tool for identifying corrosion risk, estimating object longevity, and calculating cost benefit for storage options.