TwinTowersQualitativeAnalysisofCollapseBehavior.docVIP

Twin Towers: Qualitative Analysis of Collapse Behavior G. Oliveto A. Marinetti Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Catania, Italy ABSTRACT: This paper describes the qualitative collapse behavior of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center destroyed by a terrorist attack on 11 September 2001. After a brief description of the history of construction and of the structural concept follows an illustration of the attack and of the damage caused by the impact. An explanation is provided of why the impact alone could not cause the collapse, either total or partial, of the towers. It is then shown how the heat developed by fuel burning must have been equivalent to one thousand impacts of the aircraft type used by the terrorists. The damage caused by impact and the strength reduction caused by the temperature rise are used to explain the different collapse mechanisms of the top parts of the towers. For the north tower this leads to an estimate of the impact velocity. Finally elastic and elastic-plastic wave propagation models are used to explain the collapse mechanism of the lower part of the towers. In particular it is explained why the towers imploded on themselves and did not undergo local or global buckling collapse. Introduction On September 11th 2001 there was the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. This lead to the collapse of the towers with the loss of more than 3,000 human lives. Subsequently many structural engineers have tried to explain why the towers collapsed and why they collapsed in the way they did. Several theories have been presented in the literature and in the media, Bazant Zhou (2002) and just recently a report from the committee established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has become available (May 2002). The first author was invited on March 5th 2002 to comment on a presentation by a member of the association of engineers in Catania. This occasion provided the s