Monitoring of pigmented surfaces in accelerated ageing process by ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy and multivariate control charts

This work is an extension of a method for monitoring the conservation state of pigmented surfaces presented in a previous paper. A cotton canvas painted with an organic pigment (Alizarin) was exposed to UV light in order to evaluate the effects of the applied treatment on the surface of the sample. The conservation state of the pigmented surface was monitored with ATR–FT-IR spectroscopy and multivariate control charts.

The IR spectra were analysed by principal component analysis (PCA) and the relevant principal components (PCs) were used for constructing multivariate Shewhart, cumulative sums (CUSUM) and simultaneous scores monitoring and residuals tracking (SMART) control charts.

These tools were successfully applied for the identification of the presence of relevant modifications occurring on the surface of the sample.

Finally, with the aim to more deeply investigate what happened to the sample surface during the UV exposure, a PCA of the residuals matrix of degradation analyses only, not present in the previous paper, was performed. This analysis produced interesting results concerning the identification of the processes taking place on the irradiated surface.