Talking Pyramids

There has been a lot of talk over recent years of the weathering of the sphinx on the Giza plateau. Other monuments on the plateau are also suffering from erosion as the wind combined with the desert sands has the effect of an industrial strength sand blaster.

3D model simulates potential wind erosion

Efforts to restore the monuments have been underway for several years now but a recent study published in the March 2009 issue of the Environmental Modelling and Software predicts how the elements will cause future erosion. To do this, Ashraf Hussein and Hisham El-Shishiny from the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in Cairo created a three dimensional model of the monuments on the plateau, specifically, the three main pyramids of Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufu and the sphinx. Once the model was complete the flow of the wind across the Giza Plateau was simulated to determine which areas are most vulnerable to errosion.

This simulation was unusual because it had to handle large differences in scale among the various monuments on the Giza Plateau. To complicate matters, within the lower atmosphere the wind field must be resolved on very fine scales to achieve a high level of accuracy, said El-Shishiny.

To complicate matters, the problem size was much greater than the available computational resources. Ultimately, they ran the simulations on a cluster of 3 GHz Pentium IV processor workstations, each with 2 GB ram.

A model is only as good as its ability to make accurate predictions. That’s why the last slide is perhaps the most important: it shows pictures of the actual erosion of the Great Sphinx side by side with pictures that illustrate the model’s predictions for those same areas.

“The present work may give more insight on the effect of wind around the Giza Plateau when developing a global plan for conserving and protecting the site,” said El-Shishiny.

What next? Similar simulations that look at the wind-driven sand (which has completely buried the Sphinx several times throughout its history) are in the works, as well as research into the possibility of building a wall to reduce the wind’s influence on the Great Sphinx.

Read the full story from the International Science Grid This Week.

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Tags: Giza, technology

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