Subject:
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Re: My Prayer on this National Day of Prayer
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:18:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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732 times
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In lugnet.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> It is a stunning testimonial to the architects and engineers of WTC... steel
> melts, and concrete pulverises, at well below what Jet A burns at so the
> upper floors were doomed no matter what, but even with supports unevenly cut
> away the towers lasted a while, and when they went down, they went
> *straight* down in a controlled collapse.
>
> Think of how much worse things would have been, had they toppled sideways
> instead of collapsing in a controlled way.
>
> Small consolation to the thousands who died but I personally feel a huge
> debt of gratitude to the (anonymous?) WTC engineering team, whoever they are.
It is amazing that the towers didn't collapse right away, and things could
have certainly been much worse. As an engineer, I'll be interested in future
reports that will discuss modes of failure.
Typically, building design adheres strictly to code, and unusual occurances
aren't covered. I haven't looked through the AISC-LRFD manual thoroughly,
but I doubt loads from jet plane crashes are considered. It's up to the
client to decide whether or not to spend the extra money and have their
building designed for some extraordinary event. The decision is usually
based on a risk assessment and a study of the consequences.
I believe the WTC towers were designed to handle the impact of a 707. I'm
sure this extra design criteria helped, but unfortunatly it wasn't enough.
Nevertheless, I agree with Larry and I'm thankful that someone had the
foresight and decided it was best to account for such an extraordinary
event, even though it was for a smaller plane.
I'm sure engineers and architects will see changes in building codes soon.
They'll seriously have to consider such events as car bombs, letter bombs,
plane crashes, etc. It's sad, but we'll all see changes in life in
everything we do.
TJ
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: My Prayer on this National Day of Prayer
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| (...) I acknowledge this is a morbid line to go down, but.. I'm fairly sure that if the planes had had dry tanks instead of full transcontinental loads of Jet-A, the towers would still be standing... the impacts didn't do enough damage to cause the (...) (23 years ago, 15-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: My Prayer on this National Day of Prayer
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| (...) That was the goal of the 1993 bombers, who hadn't thought things through nearly so completely. (...) I can't recall if it's cnn.com or cbs.com, but they interviewed five or six members of the design team who are still alive (the prime (...) (23 years ago, 15-Sep-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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