Dear Hossam,

pl. provide more information about:

-wall's material type

-surface or within?

-walls width

-accessibility

-surface is valuable or you can make micro holes?

.....

your answers could facilitate my responses

Regards

as an expansion to Nasser's posting it might also be helpful if you were to specify whether your interest relates to plain wall surfaces or to decorated/inscribed ones since it is unclear as to whether the information you seek relates to damage that might affect the structural integrity of the wall or to the loss of artistic/inscriptional material.

Dear Prof. Nasser and Prof. Timothy Edward Jones,

I am sorry for that delay, it is due to technical problem. According to my question, you are very well known that the monuments in arid regions like Egypt have suffered weathering deterioration and the natural stones have been widely used as a material for buildings, monuments and art objects, threfore, I want to find out the distribution of rock's damage categories. The main wall's material type is sandstone, surface, and the walls width between 10 to 20 cm, there are many cracks and holes.

Yes, i want to measure both damages that might affect the structural integrity of the wall and the loss of artistic/inscriptional material.

My work in the heart of western desert of Egypt, here, 64 temples and archelogical sites no one wrote any thing about it, if you interested in study that sites i can arrange acomodation and car for 5 days in field study, what do you think?

Thanks alot in advance

Hossam Ismael

Dear Hossam,

Sorry for the delay but I was out in a conference.

The information you provided don't allow for formulating a cost-effective proposal. I assume that weathering is physical due to wind and sun actions and possibly to some human activities. 

The thickness of the walls (10-20cm) pones sever challenges to any geophysical method and I wonder if such an indirect intervention would be cost-effective or not. I would propose the use of GPR method with 2/2.5 GHZ bipolar antenna, but you can also use thermography to localize defects more accurately and rapidly. Other techniques that can be used are the sonic methods which is your case could be cost-effective as data interpretation is straightforward. Different velocities would allow the mapping of the damaged areas, if the two sides of the walls are accessible (?).

relating highly damaged portions to the structural integrity is out of my competence, but I suggest that some samples subjected to laboratory test may provide first order information about the resistance of the materials.

Last questions regards the humidity action, bacterial action and chemical weathering: to inspect these conditions you need applied petrographic and geochemical expertise which is available at our Department. However, I need, as I side before, more information (publication, photograph, short but detailed description).

If you would be able to send such information we may be able to write a research project for funding. You can send reserved information directly to me through this site or to my e-mail: [email protected]

Regards

Nasser

Dear Prof. Dr. Nasser,

Thank you very much for the scientific response, I'm going to send unpublished research (which represents the project proposal) on your e-mail, and in this message i will send you two papers from the temples in the Western Desert in Egypt, which studies I have set up on my own, they may need to integrate disciplines to be published in the same strong impact factor journals .

I'm going to send the results of some laboratory analysis in order to become clearer picture, and we can then writing proposal , as we work compared to archaeological areas in the Western Desert, Sinai and Luxor.

Kind regards

Hossam Ismael

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