The University of Sydney - Department of Civil
Engineering
World Trade Centre - New York - Some
Engineering Aspects
General | Structural System | Why Did It Collapse | Other Links
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les
Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers’ design and
structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented
heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow
tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a
central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were
18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have
no windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its
core and elevator system. The twin towers were the first supertall buildings
designed without any masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by
the buildings’ high speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers
designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core.
For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would
have required half the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis
Elevators developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would change
at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of
shaftways.
(Taken from http://www.skyscraper.org/)
The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures."
Taken from http://www.greatbuildings.com/
Typical Floor Plan of the World Trade Center:
A perimeter of closely spaced columns, with an internal lift core. The floors were supported by a series of light trusses on rubber pads, which spanned between the outer columns and the lift core.
Tim Wilkinson, Lecturer in Civil Engineering
(This is an initial suggestion on one possible reason for failure, and should not be regarded as official advice)
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After the initial plane impacts, it appeared to most observers that the structure had been severely damaged, but not necessarily fatally. It appears likely that the impact of the plane crash destroyed a significant number of perimeter columns on several floors of the building, severely weakening the entire system. Initially this was not enough to cause collapse.
However, as fire raged in the upper floors, the heat would have been gradually affecting the behaviour of the remaining material. As the planes had only recently taken off, the fire would have been initially fuelled by large volumes of jet fuel, creating potentially enormously high temperatures. The strength of the steel drops markedly with prolonged exposure to fire, while the elastic modulus of the steel reduces (stiffness drops), increasing deflections.
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It is possible that the blaze, started by jet fuel and then engulfing the contents of the offices, in a highly confined area, generated fire conditions significantly more severe than those anticipated in a typical office fire. These conditions may have overcome the building's fire defences considerably faster than expected. Eventually, the loss of strength and stiffness of the materials resulting from the fire, combined with the initial impact damage, would have caused a failure of the truss system supporting a floor, or the remaining perimeter columns, or even the internal core, or some combination. Failure of the flooring system would have subsequently allowed the perimeter columns to buckle outwards. Regardless of which of these possibilities actually occurred, it would have resulted in the complete collapse of at least one complete storey at the level of impact. Once one storey collapsed all floors above would have begun to fall. The huge mass of falling structure would gain momentum, crushing the structurally intact floors below, resulting in catastrophic failure of the entire structure.
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Sydney Morning Herald graphic
The only evidence so far are photographs and television footage. Whether failure was initiated at the perimeter columns or the core is unknown. The extent to which the internal parts were damaged during the collision may be evident in the rubble if any forensic investigation is conducted. Since the mass of the combined towers is close to 1000000 tons, finding evidence will be an enormous task.
Perimeter columns, several storeys high, and still linked together, lie amongst all the debris on the ground.
This photograph shows the south tower just as it is collapsing. It is evident that the building is falling over to the left. The North Tower collapsed directly downwards, on top of itself. The same mechanism of failure, the combination of impact and subsequent fire damage, is the likely cause of failure of both towers. However, it is possible that a storey on only one side of the South Tower initially collapsed, resulting in the "skewed" failure of the entire tower.
The gigantic impact forces caused by the huge mass of the falling structure landing on the floors below travelled down the columns like a shockwave faster than the entire structure fell. The clouds of debris coming from the tower, several storeys below the huge falling mass, probably result from the sudden and almost explosive failure of each floor, caused by the "shockwave".
(Pictures taken from various news sources on the Internet)
American Institute of Steel Construction http://www.aisc.org
National
Council of Structural Engineering Associations http://dwp.bigplanet.com/engineers/
Article from Engineering News
Record
British
Engineers
American
Society of Civil Engineers
The Architect
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Please direct any comments on this WTC webpage
to Tim
Wilkinson
General enquiries on civil engineering: office@civil.usyd.edu.au
Email
the departmental web page manager: webstaff@civil.usyd.edu.au
Page
last edited by: TJW
Last
Update: Wednesday, 26 September
2001 10:48:53 AM
Last Auto Update: Wednesday, 26 September
2001 10:48:53 AM
The structural integrity of the World Trade Center
depends on the closely spaced columns around the perimeter.
Lightweight steel trusses span between the central elevator core and the
perimeter columns on each floor. These trusses support the concrete
slab of each floor and tie the perimeter columns to the core, preventing
the columns from buckling outwards.
Modern structures are designed to resist fire for a
specific length of time. Safety features such as fire retarding
materials and sprinkler systems help to contain fires, help extinguish
flames, or prevent steel from being exposed to excessively high
temperatures. This gives occupants time to escape and allow fire
fighters to extinguish blazes, before the building is catastrophically
damaged.