Grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction data are combined withenergy-minimization calculations to analyse the atomic structure of the Al-rich(3sqrt{3} x 3sqrt{3})R 30 deg reconstructed surface of sapphirealpha-Al_2O_3(0001). The experiments on the BM32 beamline of the ESRF providethe non-integer-order diffraction intensities and, after Fourier transform, anincomplete Patterson map. The computer simulations are implemented to obtainstructural information from this map. In the simulations, the interactionsbetween the Al overlayer atoms were described with the Sutton-Chen potentialand the interactions between the overlayer and the sapphire substrate with alaterally modulated Lennard-Jones potential. We have shown that the hexagonalreconstructed unit cell is composed of triangles where the two layers of Aladatoms are FCC(111) ordered whereas between the triangles the stacking isFCC(001).