Assessment of the long-term performance of the underground tomb Amenophis 3rd Paraoh as an ancient rock engineering structure in Luxor, Egypt

Summary

Abstract

Mankind has built rock engineering structures going back to 5000 years at least. Research on ancient rock engineering structures or learning would definitely provide quite essential information and data for assessing the long-term behavior and performance some modern rock engineering structures. With this goal in mind, the authors have been investigating the long-term performance of the underground tomb Amenophis 3rdPharaoh as an ancient rock engineering structure in Luxor, Egypt for some time. Although there are many underground tombs of Pharaohs excavated mainly in soft-limestone in the King’s Valley, there are very few underground tombs in West Valley. The underground tomb of Amenophis 3rd Pharaoh in well-known and constructed about 3200 years ago in the West Valley. The site-investigations revealed that some pillars and walls in the tomb suffered cracking due to long-term sustaining loading, earthquakes and probably the swelling of the Esna shale due to the ground-water level increase caused by the construction of dams along Nile River. As a part of a project the authors were asked to assess the stability of the tomb in both short and long-terms. Some monitoring devices such as gap-sensor, acoustic emission sensors and temperature and humidity sensors were installed to observe the response of the tomb. Although no accelerometers were installed in the tomb, the seismicity of the region was evaluated by using the data from seismological institutes. Some experiments on the mechanical properties of surrounding rock as a function of water content were carried out and swelling characteristics of Esna shale were determined. Three-dimensional numerical analyses were carried out by using the laboratory experiments and rockmass quality evaluations. The authors present outcomes of the integrated studies and discuss their implications in engineering practice.