Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: Simple Analysis
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Volume 134, Issue 2
Abstract
The collapse behavior of the World Trade Center towers is considered formally as a propagating instability phenomenon. The application of associated concepts enables the residual capacities of both towers after the onset of collapse to be formally estimated. This information is combined into a simplified variable-mass collapse model of the overall dynamical behavior. The resulting, nonlinear governing equation of motion can be solved in closed form, to yield compact information about the overall collapse conditions.
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Acknowledgments
The writer is extremely grateful to two anonymous referees for insightful and supporting comments.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 134 • Issue 2 • February 2008
Pages: 125 - 132
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 6, 2006
Accepted: Jul 13, 2007
Published online: Feb 1, 2008
Published in print: Feb 2008
Notes
Note. Associate Editor: George Z. Voyiadjis
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