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In the September 11, 2001 attacks, a hijacked airliner crashed into each of the two main towers (1 WTC and 2 WTC) of the World Trade Center complex. This led to the total destruction of both towers, which collapsed at 9:59 am (2 WTC) and 10:28 am (1 WTC), causing massive damage to the rest of the complex and nearby buildings. Having been evacuated seven hours earlier, 7 WTC collapsed at 5:20 pm, with no casualties. 2,595 people inside and near the towers were killed, along with the 157 people who were aboard the flights.

A paper entitled "World Trade Center Building Performance Study" issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in May 2002, pronounced the WTC design fundamentally safe and attributed the collapse wholly to extraordinary factors beyond the control of the builders.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a computer model of each building to determine whether any unusual structural features of the towers might have been at fault. In 2005, NIST issued a series of reports documenting emergency response efforts and events leading up to the collapse. NIST concluded "the buildings would likely not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact and the subsequent jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires, if the fireproofing had not been dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged by aircraft impact." NIST also found the towers' stairwell design lacked adequate reinforcement.

The FEMA and NIST reports have not resolved all disagreements among engineers. New Civil Engineer published an article entitled Row erupts over why twin towers collapsed, in which one party claimed that "the towers would have collapsed after a major fire on three floors at once, even with fireproofing in place and without any damage from plane impact." Fireproofing was added after a fire in 1975 that spread to six floors before being extinguished.

Construction of 1 and 2 WTC

Construction of the towers began in 1968 and was completed in 1972 and 1973. During the period, implementation of an innovative elevator system halved the number of elevator shafts. The express elevators took people to "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, where they could board local elevators. Also unique was the grouping of columns into the core and perimeter of the building, a structural system called a "tube".

To meet the challenges of wind load, gravity load and related architectural stresses, the WTC's structural engineers took a then-unusual approach in its construction: instead of employing a traditional grid-like plan with beams evenly spaced throughout a floor, the WTC's columns were grouped in the building's core and perimeter. The core of each tower was a rectangular area 87 by 133 feet (27 by 41 meters) and consisted of steel box columns running from the bedrock to the tops of the tower. The columns tapered to the top, where they transitioned to lightweight H-beams, but the exact dimensions are unknown as the blueprints are under the jurisdiction of the Port Authority and are not public domain. Each tower had 240 steel perimeter columns (2.5 inches (63 mm) thick at the bottom, tapering to 0.25 inch (6 mm) at the top) placed 14 inches (360 mm) apart around the perimeter. This signature feature of columns grouped in the core and perimeter allowed large tracts of uninterrupted floorspace, a significant marketing feature.

Impacts of airliners

The towers were struck by hijacked Boeing 767 jet planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. A typical Boeing 767 is 180 feet (55 m) long and has a wingspan of 156 feet (48 m), with a capacity of up to 24,000 US gallons (91,000 l) of jet fuel. The planes hit the towers at very high speeds. Flight 11 was traveling roughly 490 mph (790 km/h) when it crashed into the 1 WTC, the north tower; flight 175 hit 2 WTC, the south tower, at about 590 mph (950 km/h). The resulting explosions in each tower ignited 10,000 gallons (c. 40,000 l) of jet fuel and immediately spread the fire to several different floors while consuming paper, furniture, carpeting, computers, books, walls, framing and other items in all the affected floors.

The jet fuel probably burned out in less than 10 minutes; the contents of the buildings burned over the next hour or hour and a half, according to the lead investigator of the NIST investigation.

Intense heat from the burning jet fuel and combustibles near the cores of the towers was weakening the central steel columns, the longspan floor trusses and cross trusses, and the joints connecting the floorplates to the external columns. The strength of steel drops markedly with heat, losing half its strength at a temperature of 1,202°F (650°C).

Stuctural Engineer Charles Clifton says that a combination of factors including the impact from aircraft flying at high speed caused internal structural damage. The lightness and hollowness of the towers allowed the jet fuel (and resulting fires) to penetrate far inside the towers. This lightness and hollowness were primarily functions of the absence of building-wide rows of columns (and attendant walls) and of masonry elements or heavy steel in the facades, and the use of gypsum cladding rather than reinforced concrete to encase stairways and elevator shafts. The collapse would not have occurred without the fires, but the fires may not have been as centrally positioned nor as intense had traditionally heavy high-rise construction been standing in the way of the aircraft— debris and fuel would likely have remained mostly outside the buildings and/or concentrated in more peripheral areas away from the building cores, which themselves would not have been unique failure points. In this scenario, the towers might have stood far longer, perhaps indefinitely. Fires resulting from the aviation fuel spread widely through the impact zone and ultimately led to the collapse of the towers. As the towers collapsed, the destabilization, debris, and associated fires damaged many of the buildings in the immediate vicinity.

Collapse of the two towers

The north tower, 1 WTC, was struck at 8:46:26 am and collapsed at 10:28:31 am, standing for 102 minutes 5 seconds after impact. The south tower, 2 WTC, was struck at 9:02:54 am and collapsed about 56 minutes later, around 10:00 am. According to the 9/11 commission report, "at 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds, .... The building collapsed into itself, causing a ferocious windstorm and creating a massive debris cloud."

Immediately after 9/11, experts began to offer opinions as to what caused the buildings to collapse. British structural engineer Chris Wise commented that "It was the fire that killed the buildings. There's nothing on earth that could survive those temperatures with that amount of fuel burning. The columns would have melted, the floors would have melted and eventually they would have collapsed one on top of each other." Similarly, John Knapton, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Newcastle said "The 35 tonnes of aviation fuel will have melted the steel..."

These early assessments that steel in the buildings had melted and caused the collapse were rebutted by MIT materials professor Thomas Eagar, who commented that "The fire is the most misunderstood part of the WTC collapse. It is argued that the jet fuel burns very hot, especially with so much fuel present. This is not true.... The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel". Eagar's theory, published in December 2001, focuses critically on the joints between the floor assemblies and the perimeter columns. Eagar went on to state that "the joints on the most severely burned floors gave way, causing the perimeter wall columns to bow outward and the floors above them to fall".

In 2005, NIST developed computer models of the tops of the towers, which indicated that heat from the fires made floor assemblies sag in the middle of the spans. Quoting the NIST report, "The primary role of the floors in the collapse of the towers was to provide inward pull forces that induced inward bowing of perimeter columns". These perimeter columns buckled and failed, which shifted tremendous weight-bearing load onto the core columns. This was too much for the core columns to handle, so they also buckled and failed.

A combination of three factors allowed the north tower to remain standing longer: the region of impact was higher (so the gravity load on the most damaged area was lighter); the speed of the plane was lower (so there was less impact damage); and the affected floors had had their fire proofing partially upgraded. In the south tower, intense fires led to a sudden bursting of bolts in one section, while the failures in the north tower core involved slower creep and softening effects.

The two towers collapsed in markedly different ways, which may indicate that there were two modes of failure. The north tower collapsed directly downwards, "pancaking" in on itself, while the south tower fell at an angle during which the top 20 or so stories of the building remained intact for the first few seconds of the collapse, then pulverized into dust in mid-air, and the tower continued straight down. In spite of these differences, an Australian structural engineer believes that the "same mechanism of failure, the combination of impact and subsequent fire damage, is the likely cause of failure of both towers"

Subsequent modeling suggests that in the north tower the internal trusses supporting the concrete floors failed as a result of heat-induced warping. This would have placed additional stress on the bunched core columns, which were losing integrity from both impact damage and heat. When the core columns gave out on one of the impact floors, this floor collapsed into the floor below. Once the collapse started, it was unstoppable; the huge mass of the falling structure had sufficient momentum to act as a battering ram, smashing through all the floors below. Witnesses from within the tower stated they heard "something like a heavy freight train approaching". It could be said these statements support this theory. There is some visual evidence that it was the core that collapsed first: in videos the large antenna on top of the core can be seen starting downward a fraction of a second earlier than the rest of the building. However later analysis by NIST disputes this claim, stating "that observations from a single vantage point can be misleading and may result in incorrect interpretation. When records from east and west vantage points were viewed, it was apparent that the building section above the impact area tilted to the south as the building collapsed."

In the south tower, fire is assumed to have warped and severed the single-bolt connections between the floorplates and the initially-intact external columns surrounding the impact hole, effectively creating a "hangman's drop" for that portion of the building above the point of failure. The gravity load on these bolts increased beyond their breaking point as the joints, floorplates and columns weakened. The momentum of the collapsing structure crushed everything below it.

Design criticisms

The WTC design was intended to maximize rentable floor space and minimize the intrusion of columns. To accomplish this goal, the structural columns were grouped along the perimeter and within the core of the towers. The space between the perimeter and core columns was bridged by long floor trusses, with a span of 60 feet (18.2 m) in the long-span areas and 36 feet (11.0 m) in the short span areas. This is in contrast to earlier generations of skyscrapers, such as the Empire State Building, in which the columns are arranged in a grid pattern with floor spans of no more than about 30 feet (9 m). Criticisms of this aspect of the WTC design feature the following points:

1. The large column-free area between the perimeter and core may have allowed the aircraft and the fuel they carried to penetrate deeper into the structure than they would have in a building with a more traditional grid-type column arrangement. This would spread the fire more rapidly through the building, and made damage to the stairwells and the fire proofing of the interior columns more likely.
2. A structure with the columns grouped along the perimeter and within the interior core may be inherently less redundant and robust than one with the columns arranged in a grid pattern.

There are additional criticisms regarding the use of lightweight materials in the towers:

1. The WTC used lightweight materials exclusively especially in the facade. Had the facade contained even minimal masonry elements and/or traditional heavy steel outermost column rows, it would have been less likely the aircraft would have cleanly penetrated to the core of each tower— a significant portion of debris and jet fuel would have remained outside, a much different scenario.
2. Single-bolt connections binding the longspan floorplates with the load-bearing external columns were extremely light in weight for their assigned task. A study group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded the proximal cause of the south tower collapse was failure of these bolts in the southeast corner of the building. Double-bolts should have been used.
3. The use of gypsum cladding instead of reinforced concrete to shield stairwells. Almost all skyscrapers, including those built since the WTC, shield stairwells in reinforced concrete. On September 11, it was the collapse of all stairways above the impact level that consigned all people above the impact zone in 1 WTC to death. 2 WTC had two of its three stairwells taken out above the impact area by the plane: some people above the impact zone survived by using the third stairwell. Computer models have shown that most of the stairwells in both towers would likely have remained usable until the general collapse had they been shielded in concrete.

Some see the WTC as an irresponsible experiment in lightweight, rent-space-maximized construction and place particular opprobrium on Leslie E. Robertson, its Chief Structural Engineer. Others see it as a landmark in structural engineering simply in need of refinement due to unforeseen, and probably unforeseeable, variables.

One of those variables was the size and kinetic energy of aircraft that might accidentally strike it. Robertson and others involved in design and construction of the WTC have stated that back in the 1960s they could not have planned for the jetliners of 2001. Specifically, they modeled the effects of a hit by the largest aircraft of the day, the Boeing 707-320, and presumably calibrated their design to withstand it.

According to FEMA, 1 and 2 WTC were designed to withstand the impact of a 707 lost in fog while looking to land. The modeled aircraft weighed 263,000 lb (119,000 kg) with a flight speed of 180 mph (290 km/h), as in approach and landing. The 767s that hit the towers had a kinetic energy more than seven times greater than the modeled impact. (The Boeing 747, with an empty weight more than twice that of the 767, was in the final design phase when WTC drafting began and the first 747s were constructed simultaneously with the WTC towers, but the known attributes of the 747 were apparently not modeled in designing the towers).

Although an article in The Guardian questioned its authenticity, a videotape of Osama bin Laden verified by the Pentagon indicated that Bin Laden had not believed that the buildings would collapse completely, but would collapse only above the levels where the planes struck:

We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.

A federal technical building and fire safety investigation of the collapses of the twin towers and 7 WTC was conducted by NIST. The goals of this investigation were to investigate the building construction, the materials used, and the technical conditions that contributed to the outcome of the WTC disaster. The investigation will serve as the basis for:

• improvements in the way buildings are designed, constructed, maintained, and used;
• improved tools and guidance for industry and safety officials;
• revisions to building and fire codes, standards, and practices; and
• improved public safety.

The long-anticipated report was partially released in draft for public comment on April 6, 2005. In its over 10,000 pages the conclusion reached was that the fireproofing on the steel infrastructure was blown off by the initial impact of the planes into the towers. If this had not occurred the WTC would have likely remained standing. A further finding of the report was that the staircases were not adequately reinforced to provide emergency escape for people above the impact zone.

According to the Executive Summary of NIST's final report on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers, one of its goals was to "Determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft and why and how WTC 7 collapsed" (p xli). However, the report elsewhere says that its "probable collapse sequence" "does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable." (p xliii)

Early tests conducted on steel beams from the WTC show they generally met or were stronger than design requirements, ruling them out as a contributing cause of the collapse of the towers.

Seven World Trade Center

The WTC complex had seven buildings. The third building to collapse was 7 WTC, which fell at 5:20 pm, as seen live on television. 7 WTC was a 47-story steel-frame skyscraper across the street from the rest of the complex.

The 2 million-square-foot building, 7 World Trade Center, had suffered mightily from the fire, and had been wounded by beams falling off the towers. But experts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire. They have been trying to figure out exactly what occurred, and whether they should be worried about other buildings like it around the country. – Chicago Tribune, November 29, 2001

As part of the electrical backup system, there may have been up to 160,000 l (42,000 gallons) of diesel fuel stored in five tanks within the building on several floors, as well as pumps to distribute it. It has been claimed that the diesel fuel and emergency generators spilled and ignited inside building 7. Another speculation is that the building's unusual architecture may have contributed to its collapse. Theoretically, cantilevers and structural members, required to transfer building weight off of the pre-existing Con Ed electrical substation that 7 WTC was built over, may have failed in the fire leading to the internal mechanism of collapse.

An article in the Journal of Metallurgy discussed microstructural changes that resulted in the erosion of a piece of a steel beam collected from 7 WTC:

Rapid deterioration of the steel was a result of heating with oxidation in combination with intergranular melting due to the presence of sulfur. The formation of the eutectic mixture of iron oxide and iron sulfide lowers the temperature at which liquid can form in this steel. This strongly suggests that the temperatures in this region of the steel beam approached ~1000°C by a process similar to making a 'blacksmith's weld' in a hand forge.

The FEMA report on the disaster states that "Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue". NIST continued this work and released a progress report in June 2004 in which they outlined the working hypothesis of the collapse of 7 WTC:

• An initial local failure at the floors below floor 13 due to fire and/or debris induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event), which supported a large span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet (190 m²).
• Vertical progression of the initial local failure up to the east penthouse, as large floor bays were unable to redistribute the loads, bringing down the interior structure below it.
• Collapse of the interior structure first, pulling the outer structure down and inward.
• Horizontal progression of the failure across the floors in the region of floors 5 and 7, much thicker than the rest of the floors, triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, resulting in the disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.

The final report from NIST regarding the collapse of 7 WTC was due in July 2005, but is still ongoing.

In "WTC part IIC - WTC7 Collapse Final", released in April 2005, NIST concludes about the fuel: "This finding allows for the possibility, though not conclusively, that the fuel may have contributed to a fire on Floor 5."

Conspiracy theories

Some people doubt the mainstream account of September 11th and say there has been a cover-up. This group of individuals, called "A New Generation of Conspiracy Theorists" by New York Metro, disagree with the findings of U.S. Government engineers and accounts published in mainstream media sources, and raise questions they say are not adequately answered in the official 9/11 Commission Report.

Other buildings

Numerous other buildings in the WTC and surrounding it were damaged or destroyed as the towers fell. 5 WTC suffered a large fire and a partial collapse of its steel structure.

Other buildings destroyed include St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, Marriott Hotel (3 WTC), South Plaza (4 WTC), and U.S. Customs (6 WTC). World Financial Center buildings 4, 5, 6, and 7, 90 West Street, and 130 Cedar Street suffered fires. The Bankers Trust Building, Verizon, and World Financial Center 3 suffered impact damage from the towers' collapse, as did 90 West Street. 30 West Broadway was damaged by the collapse of 7 WTC. The Deutsche Bank Building, though left standing, is currently being demolished because of water and mold damage, and severe damage caused by the neighboring towers' collapse.

References

Cited references

1. Federal Emergency Management Agency, WTC1 and WTC2 .pdf, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, URL accessed May 1, 2006
2. National Institutes of Standards and Technology, NIST and the World Trade Center, (4/25/2006), URL accessed May 1, 2006
3. Federal Emergency Management Agency, WTC1 and WTC2 .pdf, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, URL accessed May 1, 2006
4. Federal Emergency Management Agency, WTC1 and WTC2 .pdf, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, URL accessed May 1, 2006
5. Fire/Rescue News, A Look Inside a Radical New Theory of the WTC Collapse, (February 7, 2004), URL accessed May 24, 2006
6. Eagar, Thomas W., Christopher Musso, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?, Journal of Metals, JOM, Volume 53, Issue 12 pp.8-11, URL accessed May 1, 2006
7. Clifton, G. Charles, Collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers .pdf, URL accessed May 1, 2006
8. Gross, John L., Therese P. McAllister,Structural Fire response and Probable Collapse Sequence of the World Trade Center Towers, Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster, NIST NCSTAR 1-6, URL accessed May 1, 2006
9. Wilkinson, Tim, Why did it collapse?, World trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects, (April 3, 2006), URL accessed May 1, 2006
10. BBC News, How the World Trade Center fell, (September 13, 2001), URL accessed May 25, 2005
11. BBC News,Twin towers' steel under scrutiny, (October 17, 2001), URL accessed May 25, 2006
12. Eagar, Thomas W, Christopher Musso, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation, (December 2001), URL accessed May 25, 2006
13. Wilkinson, Tim, Why did it collapse?, World trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects, (April 3, 2006), URL accessed May 1, 2006
14. Wilkinson, Tim, Why did it collapse?, World trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects, (April 3, 2006), URL accessed May 1, 2006
15. Eagar, Thomas, The Collapse: An Engineer's Perspective, NOVA, (May 2002), URL accessed May 1, 2006
16. Bazant, Zdenek P., Yong Zhou, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?—Simple Analysis, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, (September 22, 2001), URL accessed May 1, 2006
17. Gross, John L., Therese P. McAllister,Structural Fire response and Probable Collapse Sequence of the World Trade Center Towers, Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster, NIST NCSTAR 1-6, URL accessed May 1, 2006
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31. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Observations, findings and Recommendations .pdf, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, (Chapter 8.2.5.1), URL accessed May 1, 2006
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References

• National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technology Administration (2006). "NIST and the World Trade Center". NIST building and fire safety investigation. US Department of Commerce. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
• Wilkinson, Tim (2006). "World Trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects". School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
• McAllister, Therese (2002). "World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations (FEMA 403)" (pdf). Federal Emergency Management Agency. Retrieved 2006-05-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Eagar, Thomas W. (2001). "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation". JOM, 53 (12). The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. Retrieved 2006-05-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Bazant1, Zdenek P. (2001). "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? - Simple Analysis". Journal of Engineering Mechanics ASCE, 9/13/01. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Engineering. Retrieved 2006-05-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• Clifton, G. Charles (2001). "Collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers". CAD Digest. TenLinks, Inc. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
• Edgar, Dr. Thomas (2002). "The Collapse: An Engineer's Perspective". Why the Towers Fell. WGBH Educational Foundation. Retrieved 2006-05-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Usmani, A.S. (2003). "How did the WTC towers collapse: a new theory" (pdf). Fire Safety Journal, Volume 38, Issue 6. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved 2006-05-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• NOVA online (2002). "The structure of metal". Why the Towers Fell. WGBH Educational Foundation. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
• Kean, Thomas H. (2004). "Eleventh Public Hearing". Hearings. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
• America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero (Television series). United States. 2002. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |crew= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |distributor= ignored (|publisher= suggested) (help)

External links

• Bill Biggart's Final Exposures contains a photo of the WTC Marriott severely damaged by the collapse of 2 WTC immediately before the collapse of 1 WTC in which the photographer, Bill Biggart, was killed.
• Video showing fire in corner of WTC2

• World Trade Center
• September 11, 2001 attacks