Failure Analysis of the World Trade Center 5 Building
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open in viewerThis project involves a failure analysis of the internal structural collapse that occurred in World Trade Center 5 (WTC 5) due to fire exposure alone on September 11, 2001. It is hypothesized that the steel column-tree assembly failed during the heating phase of the fire. The results of this research have serious and far-reaching implications, for this method of construction is utilized in approximately 20,000 existing buildings and continues to be very popular. Catastrophic failure during the heating phase of a fire would endanger the lives of firefighters and building occupants undergoing extended egress times (e.g., high-rise buildings), or relying upon defend-in-place strategies (e.g., hospitals). Computer software was used to reconstruct the fire event and predict the structural performance of the assembly when exposed to the fire. Results from a finite element, thermal-stress model confirms this hypothesis, for it is concluded that the catastrophic, progressive structural collapse occurred approximately 2 hours into the fire exposure.
- Creator
- Contributors
- Degree
- Unit
- Publisher
- Language
- English
- Identifier
- etd-042907-214619
- Keyword
- Advisor
- Defense date
- Year
- 2007
- Date created
- 2007-04-29
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- Last modified
- 2020-12-10
Relations
- In Collection:
Items
Items
Thumbnail | Title | Visibility | Embargo Release Date | Actions |
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LaMalva.pdf | Public | Download | ||
Addendum.pdf | Public | Download |
Permanent link to this page: https://digital.wpi.edu/show/08612n67z