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From:  "absolute_anarchy_ca" <absolute_anarchy@h...>
Date:  Tue Apr 9, 2002  4:05 pm
Subject:  Re: WTC analysis.

--- In PurpleCrow2000@y..., "CAREY WONG" <careywwong@h...> wrote:
> This site is by far the best I have come across with detail to
> orginal photos from the site. There will be no doubts after
> his. http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/tradecencrimes/page368.html

Actually, I have serious doubts about this article. Not the least of
which is the comparison between the Empire State Building and the WTC.
The construction of the buildings is completely different. The Empire
state building is build around the more conventional model for
skyscraper construction. They WTC was not a typical skyscraper.

A typical skyscraper is built around a central service core that bears
the weight of the building. The floors are more or less "hung" off the
central core and the external walls do very little in the way of
structual support. This allows for the external walls to be mostly
window. In architecture these non-loadbearing walls are referred to a
sheet-walls. This is why the plane hitting the Emprire State building
did very little structural damage. This is also why the 1996 attack on
the WTC did very little damage. In that attack a bomb was set off near
the base of the elevator shaft. As anyone who knows anything about
demolition or architecture can tell you this is the right approach for
bringing down a conventionally constructed tower as it does
siginificant damage to the load-bearing central core.

It was completely the wrong approach for the WTC, however. In order to
maximize the per floor floorspace in the towers the WTC did not have a
load bearing central core (they take up a lot of room) but rather was
built with load bearing outer walls. The floors themselves bore the
lateral tension of the walls, basically holding the walls together
against the forces from above would tend to bow them outward. The is
the function of the butresses one would see on a typical cathdral, but
with the WTC the buttresses were internal, with the outward forces of
the opposing walls blancing eachother. In short, the floors of the WTC
had very little to hold UP but a lot to hold IN.

The impact of the planes upset the balancing act the floors performed.
Opposite the gap left there would be significant forces from the
weight above pushing the wall out. Lower down on the building these
forces would be more significant, explaing both why the building
struck second collapsed first. As the fires burn welds and rivets
become hot, not to to the point of melting, but enough that they
cannot bear the load of the imbalanced stresses. Then the damaged
section breaks outward. This causes the floors above to be pushed IN,
and crumpling upper floors fall INSIDE the building, starting a domino
effect that pulls the building in on itself, looking a lot LIKE a
building that has had its central core knocked out from below, but in
fact resulting from an entirely different dynamic.

In the end the outer walls of the lower floors are left standing
because these are the walls that had to bear the most weight and are
therefore the strongest part of the structure. The interior is gone
because the rest of the building has landed on it.

Frankly, having studied architecture, I wasn't the least bit surprised
by the way the buildings collapsed nor by the fact that the tower
struck second fell first even as I watched it all unfold that
particular September morning. Likewise I laughed my ass off at the
failed 1996 bombing. You'd THINK somebody trying to blow up a building
would spend a few minutes on understanding the stresses in the
architecture before placing the bomb.

--AA