Vibration

I am a student of conservation and restauration of paintings and
sculptures at the University of Applied Sciences / University of the
Arts in Bern. At the moment I'm doing my diploma thesis with the
working title "Measurement of vibration of canvas paintings during
transport conditions".

In the practical part of my thesis I want to test some dummies
(coated canvas on a wooden stretcher) in a self constructed rig
which can simulate typical vibration models of a truck or a
transport with a dolly on the floor in a museum. During the tests
the generated vibrations in the canvas are detected with several
accelerometers. Thereby the vibrations of the canvas depend amongst
other parameters on their tension and this is my problem. Until now
I couldn't find a convincing method to measure the stress of an
already stretched canvas. The systems described in the literature
(e.g. Russell, Berger) are used to measure the stress during the
mounting of the canvas. These aren't suitable to me because the
tension measured declines gradually after the mounting. Other
methods can just measure changes in tension, like the EPSI Christina
Young mentioned in one of her articles. So here is my question: Do
you know any method to measure the tension of an already stretched
canvas?


                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 21:7
                   Distributed: Monday, May 28, 2007
                        Message Id: cdl-21-7-019
                                  ***