Engineering Review, Vol. 46 No. 3, 2026.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.30765/er.3454
A technical review on the problem of vibrating canvas and current findings - the dynamic-mechanical behaviour of canvas paintings: from Chladni figures towards a time domain response analysis
Kerstin Kracht
; Dynamics Group (M-14), School of Mechanical Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
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* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Since the 1990s, the vibration behaviour of canvases has been receiving attention due to the increase in the number of art transports resulting from the increase in the number of special exhibitions.
Understanding the vibration behaviour of canvases is essential for the assessment and management of the risk of damage due to the dynamic excitation of the paintings caused by visitors and transport. Building on initial measurements of canvas vibrations conducted to evaluate the performance of transport crates, the vibration behaviour of paintings in the field of preventive conservation was characterized using Chladni figures from the early 1990s well into the 2000s. Tremendous advances in laser and high-speed camera measurement technology as well as in automation technology over the past 20 years now enable high-resolution analysis of canvas vibrations in both the time and spatial domains.
This article provides an overview of research published to date regarding the dynamic-mechanical behaviour of oil paintings on textile supports. It demonstrates that this field of research is characterized by classical experimental modal analysis (accounting for non-linear mode shapes) as well as by certain time-domain analyses. To evaluate the frequency- and time-domain-based methods, measurement results are discussed for a primed canvas—tested at two different levels of pre-tension—and for a painted test specimen in four different mounting configurations. Both approaches prove to be justified when the objective of the analysis is taken into account.
Keywords
canvas vibration; risk assessment and management; modal nonlinearities; time domain analysis; wave propagation; physics informed neural operators
Hrčak ID:
351638
URI
Publication date:
21.7.2026.
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