Experimental study of a local ventilation strategy to protect semi-exposed relics in a site museum

Indoor environmental controls are critical considerations when preserving artifacts in museums. Controlling the indoor environment of site museum buildings with large space layout typically consumes large amounts of energy. Most of the energy load needed to preserve relics is dissipated throughout the non-occupied space, because the environments that contain the relics occupy relatively little space compared to the entire exhibition hall. In this study, an energy efficient local ventilation system was proposed to independently control the environment of a funerary pit, which was preserved within a museum separate from the large exhibition hall. An experimental hall, which consists of a funerary pit and an experimental local ventilation system, was built to simulate a site museum building. Experiments were conducted to investigate the system's performance and to validate its ability to preserve historical terracotta figurines in their semi-exposed pits within the exhibition hall. The study evaluated the stability of the conservation environment and the system's energy usage by assessing the effects of the ventilation rate. The experimental results showed that the local ventilation system provides an energy-saving strategy supporting the environmental control of the funerary pit. The LV system significantly decreased temperature fluctuations in the funerary pit and temperature differences across semi-exposed relics. The system could be used to control the local preservation environment of the funerary pit separately from a large space exhibition hall.