The Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers

[PRtaina]

Though I don't live there, I always travel to NYC often throughout the years ever since I was little. Since I have family and alot of friends over there I go to visit them alot. Though I do not live a big piece of my heart IS there and I felt this very deep within me.

As for the buildings, I hope that they do build those towers up. We cannot let this have an effect on our future, we must take it as an eye opener to be aware that there are some evil people. Of course building the towers with a greater design, Jibaro's plan sounded pretty good but I am not no architect, so I'll leave that up to you engineers.

[hipo]

Well, I don't know about the extra columns, that could help (somehat). But I love the idea of improving the communication and sensor systems to quickly detect possible attacks.
I had the chance to see the area last weekend. I went with a crew of Engineers from NJ. From an Engineering perspective it is grounds for a lot of research and study for future improvements. But from a human perspective is totally depressing. The smell of burned steel, plastic, concrete and (unfortunately) bodies is really strong. It stayed in my clothes until I went home and washed them. And it's very dangerous, which makes the search and disposal of wastes really slow. The workers there are doing a wonderful job. But it's going to take time to clear up the area.

[El_Jibaro]

Originally posted by PRtaina
This is interesting. I have a question. Though I doubt it do you think any explosives were involved?

[b][i]PRTaina:

The airplanes full of fuel were use both as explosive devices and as "fire-bombs".

The initial impact and blast did not do the job though since the towers stood up at least for 40 minutes and 15 minutes the other; it was the fire at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit which made the load-bearing structures in the floors with the fires to BUCKLE. Added to that, the impacts did put the towers in motion (like putting a tuning fork to vibrate). The tower with the most load over the impact zone collapsed first, and the next one then followed later.

One sure way of stopping such a collapse would be to double the number of load-bearing columns, and also of designing a fire suppression system for fires of that intensity and magnitude.

One fire suppression system would be to use Halon (or a similar fire suppressor allowed by current EPA laws) though it would mean the death of the people inside the fire zone (who should have died instantly anyway). Halon type gasses kill fires by starving them of air, which would also kill anyone inside their effective zone. But it would be impossible for people to survive a fire strong enough to melt steel, anyway...

Thus, it is very possible to completely avoid a repeat of this event. The next time they tried to repeat their feat they would need to blow up an atom bomb to have any success, and in that case the challenge is to stop terrorists from gaining access to atom bombs in the first place.