Transportation of King Ramses II Statue

Eng Mohamed Labib from Market leaders was the consulting engineer for core drilling and
wire sawing of the concrete base of the statue.
Preparation
We started testing the concrete base using many core drilling, wall sawing and wire saw in
different location of the concrete base far away from the main statue base.
The main concrete base under the statue is 4.80 L x 2.20 W x 4.00 height meter.
They checking every cm in the statue to record all notch or drill or scratch and have thousands
of photos for all parts of the statue.
Using Radar scanning the statue and the concrete base.
Fixing of Vibration sound sensors 27 sensors around the statue two weeks prior to any
work to record the live vibration of the statue and to make sure that all work will be done
on the statue not exceeding the normal street noise level.
Two complete hydraulic system just hinging the cage with eight hydraulic telescopic cylinders
5” stroke and 100 ton capacity.
Four column fixing to the cage and four outer columns holding the outer sides of cage. At
each column have many wood plates with one inch thick under the hydraulic jacks.
Starting work
They fixed a thick steel plate of one inch thickness around the concrete base using one
inch core drilling and steels thread bars to hold the concrete base as one piece. Then injection
the concrete with High strength concrete (grout).
Coring 8 holes each 10" diameter below the steel plate and fixing 8 reinforcement steel
supports, which will be carrying the complete statue cage. As well as hinged the complete
cage system with two big bearing to have statue flexible movement vertically and horizontally
in all position and making sure that statue will be stand at vertical position during
transportation, trucking the bridge and when driving down of the exit bridge.
Wire saw
Wire saw was the most dangerous work part because statue is 67 feet height with 120
tons of weight plus 20 tons for the concrete remain base all concentrated on 4.8 meter
long x 2.2 meter width of concrete base.
It is very sensitive to make sure no inclination of the statue even for one degree especially
with such high height and heavy load on a small base of the statue.
We started wire sawing the upper level of concrete base just below the carrying support by
10" using two wires saw machines one at each side of the statue after divided the concrete
base to two equal parts.
Start wire sawing from the middle of the base to the outer side with both machines at the
same time. After every 1/2 hour sawing inserting steel plate from all side with 10 mm
thickness and 200 mm width and 500 mm long replacing the wire cutting clearance. To
make sure that statue will not be inclined during the wire cutting or after the last step of wire
cutting. Wire cutting took approx 6 hours.
Market Leader of Cairo entry to DiamondAward 2009 page 2/17