THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

HIMANSHU VAID#NISHANT KOHLI#MRINAL KUMAR#MAHWISH#MANIKA

The Towers' History

Origins of the World Trade Center and the World's Tallest Buildings

The origins of the World Trade Center extend back to 1946, when the New
York Legislature created the World Trade Corporation with a view to
creating a trade center in Manhattan.

The history is recounted in greater detail at Great Buildings Online.

The Port Authority chose as the site for the WTC in 1962 the block bounded
by West, Church, Liberty, and Vesey Streets, and selected architect Minoru
Yamasaki to design the project. At Yamasaki's request, Worthington,
Skilling, Helle and Jackson was selected as the engineering firm, and
Yamasaki worked closely with its engineers John Skilling and Leslie
Robertson.

The architectural firm Emery Roth & Sons handled production work.

The site MASTER PLAN from 1963, though detailed, was modified in some
respects prior to implementation. In particular, the final configuration of the
low-rise buildings WTC 4, 5, and 6 was different than shown in the
MASTER PLAN.

The Towers' Architecture

The Innovative Design of the World Trade Center Towers

The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world when they
were completed in 1972.
The design, created by architect Minoru Yamaski, was innovative in
several ways, including its elevator system, and its structural
system.
These innovations would be widely adopted in later skyscrapers.

Elevator System

A conventional elevator system would have taken up half the space of the
lower floors.

A novel system employing express and local elevators was developed by

Otis Elevators.

The express elevators took people to "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th
floors, where they could board local elevators.

This system halved the number of elevator shafts.

Structural System

1 and 2 World Trade Center used the so-called tube within a tube
architecture, in which closely-spaced external columns form the building's
perimeter walls, and a dense bundle of columns forms its core.

Tall buildings have to resist primarily two kinds of forces: lateral loading
(horizontal force) due mainly to the wind, and gravity loading (downward
force) due to the building's weight.

The tube within a tube design uses a specially reinforced perimeter wall to
resist all lateral loading and some of the gravity loading, and a heavily
reinforced central core to resist the bulk of the gravity loading.

The floors and hat truss completed the structure, spanning the ring of space
between the perimeter wall and the core, and transmitting lateral forces
between those structures.

Structural System
The tube within a tube
architecture was relatively new
at the time the Twin Towers
were built, but has since been
widely employed in the design
of new skyscrapers. In fact
most of the world's tallest
buildings use it, including:
The Sears Tower (1450 ft)
The World Trade Center
Towers (1350 ft)
The Standard Oil of Indiana
Building (1125 ft)
The John Hancock Center
(1105 ft)

Construction

Construction began in 1966.

WTC 1, the North Tower, rose ahead of WTC 2. Although not completed until
1972, lower floors were ready for their first tenants in late 1970. WTC 2, the
South Tower, was finished in 1973.

Of the over 10,000 workers involved in building the complex, 62 died in

construction accidents.

The towers were dedicated on April 4th, 1973.

The owners initially had difficulty finding tenants to fill the enormous towers,
which had over 8 million square feet of floor space.

Most of the North Tower was still unoccupied when a serious fire broke out in
February of 1975.

Construction

The 110-story
Twin Towers,
rising 1,368
and 1,362 feet,
remained the
world's tallest
and largest
buildings until
they were
surpassed by
the Sears
Tower in 1974.

Facts
Architect
Location
Date
Building Type
Construction

Climate
Context
Style
Notes

Minoru Yamasaki
New York
1966 to 1977. Demolished by terrorist
attack on September 11, 2001
skyscraper, commercial office tower
System steel frame, glass, concrete
slabs on steel truss joists
temperate
urban
Modern
Yamasaki and Associates, with Emery
Roth and Sons. 110 stories tall.

Facts about the Famous World Trade Center

The World Trade Center consisted of a cluster of 6 buildings that occupied a

single superblock, plus Building 7, which occupied an adjacent block.

building

first occupied

floors

elevators

number

area, ft^2

passenger

freight

North Tower

1970

110

45,000-50,000

97

South Tower

1970

110

45,000-50,000

97

Building 4

1977

84,000

12

Building 5

1972

108,000

Building 6

1975

80,400

Building 7

1985?

47 no information available

Foyer of WTC

World Trade Center - Some Engineering

Aspects

Height: 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415

meters)
Owners: Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey.
(99 year leased signed in April 2001 to
groups including Westfield America and
Silverstein Properties)
Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth
and Sons consulting
Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie
Robertson of Worthington, Skilling, Helle
and Jackson
Ground Breaking: August 5, 1966
Opened: 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon
cutting
Destroyed: Terrorist attack, September 11,
2001

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

Each tower was supported by a

structural core extending from its
bedrock foundation to its roof.
The cores were rectangular pillars
with numerous large columns and
girders, measuring 87 feet by 133
feet.
The core structures housed the
elevators, stairs, and other
services.
The cores had their own flooring
systems, which were structurally
independent of the floor
diaphragms that spanned the
space between the cores and the
perimeter walls.
The core structures, like the
perimeter wall structures, were
100 percent steel-framed.

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

Reports on the number of core columns vary from 44 to 47. The exact
arrangement of the columns is not known due to the secrecy of detailed
engineering drawings of the towers. It is clear from photographs, such as
the one on the right, that the core columns were abundantly cross-braced.

Establishing the true nature of the core structures is of great importance

given that the most widely read document on the World Trade Center attack
-- the 9/11 Commission Report -- denies their very existence, claiming the
towers' cores were "hollow steel shaft[s]:"

For the dimensions, see FEMA report, "World Trade Center Building
Performance Study," undated. In addition, the outside of each tower was
covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel
columns were 40 inches apart.

These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior
core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and
stairwells were grouped. Ibid.

The Structural System

Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely,
and the relationship between the towers design and structure is clear.
Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the
engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of
closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a
central core.
The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4"
wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no
windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system.
The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any
masonry.
Worried that the intense air pressure created by the buildings high speed
elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers designed a solution
using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. For the elevators,
to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would have required half
the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators
developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would
change at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of
shaftways.

The Structural System

The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is

impressively simple.

The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with
columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning
forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building.

A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the
most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring
the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall
structures.

Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as
much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor.

The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in

depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm
to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load
pressures."

Typical Floor Plan of the World Trade Center

A perimeter of closely spaced columns, with an internal lift core. The

floors were supported by a series of light trusses on rubber pads, which
spanned between the outer columns and the lift core.

Columns

Like the perimeter columns -- and like steel columns in all tall buildings -the thickness of the steel in the core columns tapered from bottom to top.
Near the bottoms of the towers the steel was four inches thick, whereas
near the tops it may have been as little as 1/4th inch thick.

The top figure in the illustration to the right is a cross-section of one of the
smaller core columns from about half-way up a tower, where the steel was
about two inches thick.

The bottom figure shows the base of one of the larger core columns, where
the steel was five inches thick.

The bases of the columns also had slabs of steel running through their
centers, making them almost solid.

Columns

The top illustration indicates what may have been typical dimensions and thickness of
the smaller core columns, about half-way up the tower. The outermost rows of core
columns were apparently considerably larger, measuring 54 inches wide

Columns

This diagram shows horizontal sections of the Twin Towers' perimeter

columns. The leftmost figure shows a section of a column, its enveloping
insulation, and the aluminum cladding with window frame conections. The left
and middle figures show sections of a column near a tower's tops, where the
steel was thinnest. The rightmost figure shows section of a column in the
lower part of a tower, where the steel was much thicker.

Column Arrangement

The exact arrangement of the

columns and how they were
cross-braced is not apparent from
public documents such as FEMA's
World Trade Center Building
Performance Study.

The arrangement of box columns

depicted in Figure 2-10 of Chapter
2 (pictured to the right) seems
plausible, even though it
contradicts other illustrations in
the report showing a more random
arrangement.

It depicts the top floors of a tower

and does not indicate the widths
of the columns on a typical floor.

Cross-Bracing
Construction photographs show that the core columns were
connected to each other at each floor by large square girders and Ibeams about two feet deep.
The debris photograph below shows what appears to be one of the
smaller core columns surrounded by perpendicular I-beams
approximately three feet deep.
In addition, the tops of core structures were further connected by the
sloping beams of the hat truss structures.

This photograph from Ground Zero is apparently of one of the smaller core
columns connected to a set of I-beams.

This image from the documentary Up From Zero shows the base of a core column,
whose dimensions, minus the four flanges, are apparently 52 by 22 inches, with
walls at least 5 inches thick.

Photo, looking up, up, up!

Photo, exterior, looking

across the plaza and
fountain

Photo, lobby interior at

mezzanine

Photo, looking east from the

Hudson River to Manhattan
and the World Trade Center
towers, with U.S. flag.

Photo, newly constructed

World Trade Center
towers at dusk, before
Battery Park City.

Photo, Manhattan, looking

west from the Brooklyn
Bridge, with the World

Photo, Manhattan overview Photo, looking northeast

with the World Trade Center from the Hudson River to
towers in the distance.
Manhattan and the
World Trade Center
towers.

photo, looking south at night

toward the World Trade Center,
with the Empire State Building

Photo, from World Trade

Center observation deck,
looking north to midtown
Manhattan.

Photo, looking south across

Manhattan from the Empire
State Building, with the World
Trade Center towers in the
distance.

Photo, from World Trade Center

observation deck, looking east to
the Brooklyn Bridge and beyond.

The Floors
The Structural System of the Twin Towers
The floors of the Twin Towers completed the structural system
whose main elements were the core structures and the perimeter
walls.
The floor diaphragms were annular structures that spanned the
distance between the core structures and the perimeter walls,
providing large expanses of uninterrupted floor space.
The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally
independent of the surrounding floor diaphragms.

The Floors

The floor diaphragms consisted of lightweight concrete slabs poured onto

corrugated steel pans, which were supported by trusses. Primary double
trusses were interwoven with transverse secondary trusses -- a fact ignored
by the truss failure theory.
The primary trusses were 900 mm deep, and spaced on 2.04 m centers.
The 10 cm thick concrete slabs were apparently a lightweight form of
concrete typically used in high-rises.
Its density and exact composition remain unknown, but such lightweight
concrete is typically 60% as dense as concrete used in roads and
sidewalks.
The floors were the only major part of these mostly steel buildings that
contained concrete.

The Floors

This illustration from FEMA's report shows a section of the flooring system. The main
double trusses, of which two are pictured, are perpeducular to the view plane.

The Perimeter Walls

The Structural System of the Twin Towers

The towers' perimeter walls comprised dense grids of vertical steel columns
and horizontal spandrel plates.

These, along with the core structures, supported the towers.

In addition to supporting gravity loads, the perimeter walls stiffened the

Towers against lateral loads, particularly those due to winds.

The fact that these structures were on the exterior of the Towers made them
particularly efficient at carrying lateral loads. Richard Roth, speaking on
behlf of the architectural firm that designed the Towers, described each of
the perimeter walls as essentially "a steel beam 209' deep.

Regardless, it is clear that the core structures were designed to support

several times the weight of each tower by themselves.

The Perimeter Walls

The Perimeter Walls

As the diagram and photograph illustrate, the perimeter wall structures were
assembled from pre-fabricated units consisting of 3 column sections and 3
spandrel plate sections welded together.

Adjacent units were bolted together: column sections were bolted to

adjacent columns above and below, and spandrel plate sections were
mated with adjacent sections on either side with numerous bolts.

There were 59 perimeter columns on each face of the towers, and one
column on each corner bevel, making a total of 240 perimeter columns in
each tower.

Like the core columns, the thickness of the perimeter columns tapered from
the bottom to the top of the towers.

The illustrated cross-sections represent columns near the top, and near the
mid-section of the towers.

Engineers Explain WTC

Collapse
After seven months of wide speculation
about the causes of New York's World
Trade Center collapses on September 11,
2001, a report has been issued based on
physical evidence and a thorough
engineering analysis.
The report, World Trade Center Building
Performance Study: Data Collection,
Preliminary Observations and
Recommendations, was produced by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), the American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE), and other
organizations. The report explains why the
buildings failed but didn't fail right away,
enabling 99 percent of people below the
floors of impact to escape.

After the initial impacts, the most

heavily loaded columns were
probably near, but not over, their
ultimate capacities. The structure
successfully redistributed the
building weight to the remaining
elements and maintained stability
long enough for a life-saving
evacuation.
Image: ASCE/FEMA

Engineers Explain WTC Collapse

The authors attribute each tower's collapse to three separate but related
"loading events."
The first event was a Boeing aircraft hitting the building, cutting through the
exterior structure and creating a fireball that immediately consumed some of
the estimated 10,000 gallons (38 kiloliters) of jet fuel.
The highrises' structural systems were sufficiently redundant, however, that
this major damage by itself did not cause the collapse.
According to the report, "most of the load supported by the failed columns is
believed to have transferred to adjacent perimeter columns through
Vierendeel behavior of the exterior wall frame."
The second event was the continuing fire, fed both by the remaining jet fuel
and the office contents of furniture and paper.
This fire heated and weakened the structural systems, adding stress to the
damaged structure.
Meanwhile, the sprinklers were not operating as designed. "Even if these
systems had not been compromised by the impacts," says the report, "they
would likely have been ineffective... the initial flash fires of jet fuel would
have opened so many sprinkler heads that the systems would have quickly
depressurized and been unable to effectively deliver water to the large area
of fire involvement."

Engineers Explain WTC Collapse

The third event was a progressive collapse:
"As the large mass of the collapsing floors above accelerated and
impacted on the floors below, it caused an immediate progressive
series of floor failures, punching each in turn onto the floor below,
accelerating as the sequence progressed.
Freestanding exterior walls... buckled at the bolted column splice
connections and also collapsed."
The complete story may never be known.
Indeed a theme throughout the report is a call for additional
research.
However, the authors caution, it will be prohibitively expensive, if not
impossible, to protect all structures from all hazards simply by
strengthening the building codes.

Engineers Explain WTC Collapse

Heat caused steel in the floor trusses to expand, promoting buckling in

columns, at the same time that the heat softened the steel and the aircraft
debris contributed to gravity loads, leading to progressive collapse.
Image: ASCE/FEMA

Engineers Explain WTC Collapse

Engineers searched through piles

of steel for pieces of the World
Trade Center.
In particular, they looked for
columns exposed to fire or aircraft
impact, connections, bolts, and
floor trusses.
Photo: Structural Engineers of New
York (SEAoNY)

Why Did It Collapse?

Why Did It Collapse?

The only evidence so far are

photographs and television
footage.
Whether failure was initiated at
the perimeter columns or the core
is unknown.
The extent to which the internal
parts were damaged during the
collision may be evident in the
rubble if any forensic investigation
is conducted.
Since the mass of the combined
towers is close to 1000000 tons,
finding evidence will be an
enormous task.

Why Did It Collapse?

This photograph shows the
south tower just as it is
collapsing. It is evident that
the building is falling over to
the left. The North Tower
collapsed directly
downwards, on top of itself.
The same mechanism of
failure, the combination of
impact and subsequent fire
damage, is the likely cause
of failure of both towers.
However, it is possible that a
storey on only one side of
the South Tower initially
collapsed, resulting in the
"skewed" failure of the entire
tower.

Why Did It Collapse?

While the ways the two towers fell were slightly different, the basic cause is
similar for both - a large number of columns were destroyed on impact, and
the remaining structure was gradually weakened by the heat of the fire.

Not much significance should be taken from the fact that one tower fell in 45
minutes and the other in 90 minutes.

The gigantic dynamic impact forces caused by the huge mass of the falling
structure landing on the floors below is very much greater than the static
load they were designed to resist.

Each of the Twin Towers had 11,000 built-in shock

absorbers to lessen the buildings' sway in strong
wind.

Surpassing Facts

Number of stories in each

tower 110
Height of Tower One 1,368 feet

Amount of masonry walls 6 million

square feet

Height of Tower Two 1,362 feet

Amount of painted surfaces 5 million

square feet

Height of TV mast on Tower

One 330 feet

Number of lighting fixtures 200,000

Amount of fill excavated

beneath the WTC site >1
million cubic yards
Weight of contract drawings for
the steel used in WTC 650
pounds

Amount of structural steel used

in WTC 200,000 tons
Weight of each tower 500,000
tons
Amount of rentable space
about 10 million square feet

Number of windows 43,600

Number of elevators in both towers 198
Number of "passenger movements" per
day in WTC elevators 450,000
Distance seen in every direction from
observation deck 45 miles
Amount each tower swayed from true
center in strong winds 3 feet
Cost to build the WTC about $1 billion

#THANKS