Climate induced damage in decorated oak wooden panels is considered to be a high risk for the preeminent museum collections. To advise museums on the development of future sustainable preservation strategies and to define rational guidelines for indoor climate specifications, climate induced physical and mechanical damage has been analysed in a collection study, experimental testing of mock-ups and by finite element modelling. The collection study consisted of the development of a comprehensive methodology to select objects of interest from the collection and analyse their condition using a combination of visual inspection and archival searches. Mock-up samples of wooden panels with representative structural elements were exposed to varying climate conditions in climate controlled rooms and monitored with state-of-the-art experimental mechanics equipment. Further the collection study and experimental testing were used to inform the development of a finite element model of crack growth under 3-point bending. The work was performed within the Cimate4Wood project, a multidisciplinary collaboration between conservators and scientists work. The paper presents the methodology of the museum study and results from the museum study, experimental testing and modelling.@en

The 3TU coalition consists of the three universities of technology in the Netherlands: Delft, Eindhoven and Twente, which are all all-round engineering universities. The universities decided to strengthen engineering research and education in the Netherlands by collaborating and learning from each other in the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE). In the CEE, the three universities work on joint research and development projects with a special focus on studying and enhancing engineering education in a structured way. The project reported in this paper is set up within the framework of the 3TU CEE and pertains to curriculum change in the three participating technical universities. . In recent years the three universities overhauled their bachelor programmes to improve the learning experiences of the students and, ultimately, improve graduation rates and diminish time to graduation. Such curriculum changes are usually not documented in such a way that the process and outcomes can be easily understood and that limits the capacity of an organisation to learn from them. In this CEE research project, the overhaul processes are mapped, evaluated and compared ex post facto. The goal of this effort is to collect and share experiences and ideas on course programme development and implementation and to isolate effective practices. To achieve this, an ontology of factors influencing a curriculum change process needed to be developed, to allow comparison across the research sites. This ontology was designed to help map and evaluate effective practices for design and implementation of changes in course programmes, but also to help understand what interventions are effective in terms of improving student success. The special focus in this project is the uniqueness of developing engineering course programmes. Engineering is an interdisciplinary field where scientific knowledge is applied knowledge to design solutions to solve complex problems in an engineering kind of way (see e.g. Godfrey Parker, 2010; Graham, 2012). This creates many challenges for those who design course programmes, but also forthose who implement such a programme. In this paper we describe the elements of the ontology and the scientific basis for inclusion. We also describe how the ontology fits in with the research methodology of the project.@en