Characterization of ancient marquetry using different non-destructive testing techniques

Abstract

Non-destructive testing of objects and structures is a valuable tool, especially in cultural heritage where the preservation of the inspected sample is of vital importance. In this paper, a decorative marquetry sample is inspected with three non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques: air-coupled ultrasound, X-ray micro-tomography, and infrared thermography. Results from the three techniques were compared and discussed. X-ray micro-tomography presented the most detailed results. On the other hand, infrared thermography provided interesting results with the advantage of being cheap and easy in the deployment of the NDT method.