What are your opinions on the structure and collapse of the World Trade Center?

Question

I am not an engineer, but I am still a bit perplexed by certain questions. Some are as follows:

If the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be a model for the modern office tower, serving as a kind of a spine, how much weight and office space could be occupied beyond the halfway point in height? You will notice that beyond the ground level the Eiffel tower only has two platforms, the top one smaller than the lower one. After that the stairs cease, and only an elevator shaft is accommodated in the structure, apart from an obsevation deck at the top.

I worked and navigated in smaller towers, and recall that most people took the milkrun elevators serving the bottom floors and few seemed to be taking the express elevators higher up.

Were all the upper floors of the WTC towers really occupied? Could the upper floors realistically have had up to 40,000 square feet of office space?

Why did the perimeter columns appear to fall in sheets if fixed at the top and bottom? Was it stable?

Answer 1

There was no way a plane made the structure of the World Trade Center fall. It's impossible. The towers were specifically designed to withstand a terrorist plane, and the fire reaching steel's melting point is illogical as well. The "sheets" you describe are displaying the signs of controlled demolition. Do a little research, see what you find.

Answer 2

Model or not your comparison is Apples and Oranges! The Eiffel tower was not a building its a skeleton of one in many aspects. You have not taken into fact what happened either. When have planes and such a huge amount of highly flammable jet ever been crashed into a building? What would be effect? Your listening to too many wacko theories that just don't wash. Popular Science did a study with engineers and showed how the impact fire and explosion brought down buildings. Their findings proved that the wacko theories and accusations that buildings were brought down by something other than the planes was false. Stay away from the wacko sites otherwise you might be wearing tin foil on your head for protection next

Answer 3

The towers designed to withstand the lateral shock of a small plane, but the main problem was not the lateral shock it was the fuel tank.

Planes fuel produce a very high temperature and one of the disadvantages of steel structures is the low fire resistance, the fuel tank exploded joints started to milt causing a local failure in the destroyed floor. You'll note the upper floors failed as a one unit for a while then the failure continued as dominoes pieces.

Imagine you dropped thirty floors suddenly on one floor, the thirty floors will crush the lower one then take and fall to the lower and so on.

Answer 4

Well if you know how to build anything but people like you only know how to talk or see it on paper.The wtc was nothing like the Eiffel towers it was put up for a show not to work out of they was going to take it down.The wtc was built like stacking unit on top of units when the unit failed the crash went into the rest went down like dominoes.Yes there could be 40,000 sq ft in the upper floors don't see your point about that a building don't have to go up like a tower to stay up.

Answer 5

The history channel had some engineers explain the collapse, so you might want to check with them. Simply put, once a single floor collapsed, the weight of the floors above collapsed onto the floors below overwhelming their structural integrity and causing each to collapse in its turn.

Answer 6

I am not a engineer either but its very odd how nice and even the building fell, and even more so that it fell in a complete pile completely to the ground. You would think that part of the building would have remained or that it even woulda fell to the side at one point. Either way though its lucky that the building was insured for 'acts of terrorism' just 6 weeks before all this happned. What Luck! I wish acts of terrorism or war insurance existed for regular people's homes and small businesses.

Answer 7

the eiffel tower was built a few years before the WTC. in those few years, there were a few advancements.

typically, the most simple answer is the correct one. in this case, the conspiracy theories are not simple, as they usually aren't.

also, the fire doesn't need to reach the melting temperature of steel for the beams to buckle.

Answer 8

The structure was one of the strongest buildings ever erected.
The collapse cannot be fully explained other than by controlled demolition.
In fact $100,000 has been offered for anyone who can prove that it collapsed as described by the 9/11 Commission. No-one has taken up the offer.
Anyone who is convinved it wasn't a controlled demolition can get well paid for fully documenting his proof.

Answer 9

I reserve judgement on the attached video of a MIT scientist on the subject of the collapse, but at the very least, you will find it interesting viewing for 10 mintues.

Answer 10

The problem with world trade or anyother highrise building, when they build that building they design using 2d software such Autocad, and you can't do analysis on strenght on 2d environtment when they start using 3d software then one can analyst strenght or stress level of building structure. Using analysis sofware any FEA software you can determine strenght of structure of that building which will make it more saver.