Suzhou Satake Helped Build the World's First Multi-Field Coupling Laboratory for Rock and Soil Cultural Relics
Recently, the Gansu Provincial People's Government officially announced the 2024 Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Awards. The project "Research and Application of a Multi-Field Coupled Environment Simulation Laboratory for the Conservation of Rock and Soil Cultural Relics," jointly completed by the Dunhuang Academy, Lanzhou University, Suzhou Satake Engineering Co., Ltd. (SSEC), Northwest University, and Shanghai Normal University, won the first prize of the Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award.
Suzhou Satake led and constructed the core facilities of the laboratory, providing crucial hardware support for overcoming the bottleneck in the study of weathering of rock and soil cultural relics.
Rock and soil cultural relics are subjected to the coupled effects of multiple environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, salinity, and light over long periods, resulting in extremely complex weathering mechanisms.
Traditional research is limited by low similarity of scaled samples, poor accuracy of environmental simulation, and difficulties in superimposing multiple factors, making it difficult to accurately reflect the long-term deterioration process of cultural relics. To overcome this global challenge, the Dunhuang Academy, in collaboration with several universities and enterprises, launched a special research project.
As the main contractor for the laboratory construction, Suzhou Satake Engineering Co., Ltd. (SSEC) fully leveraged its technical advantages in the fields of environmental simulation and artificial climate testing, undertaking the overall design, equipment development, and system integration of the multi-field coupled environment simulation laboratory. It successfully built the world's first full-scale multi-field coupled environment simulation laboratory for rock and soil cultural relics.
This laboratory can simultaneously load multiple environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, light, rainfall, salt spray, and wind field, achieving precise control over long periods, on a large scale, and through multiple cycles.
The Suzhou Satake R&D team independently developed a natural environment simulation loading system based on time-series, amplitude, and frequency parameters, establishing an integrated experimental process from environmental setting and full-scale sample testing to end-to-end data acquisition. This provides my country with its first physical, full-scale, multi-field coupled empirical platform in the field of rock and soil cultural relic protection.
Based on this laboratory, the research team systematically defined weathering damage types, revealed the influence weights of factors such as moisture, salinity, and temperature on the deterioration of cultural relics, and clarified the scientific range of the annual average weathering rate. The project's results have been applied to 54 national key cultural relic protection projects, resulting in 76 published papers, 28 authorized patents, and the training of 57 high-level talents.
This project not only injects core technological content into the "Dunhuang Experience" but also provides a replicable and scalable "Chinese solution" for the protection of rock and soil cultural relics in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. Suzhou Satake's core contribution to the laboratory construction signifies that Chinese enterprises have achieved globally leading independent innovation capabilities in the field of high-end equipment for cultural relic protection.
