Discussion: Fire-induced structural failure: the World Trade Center, New York

摘要

The collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) on II September 2001 is an extreme case that any structure would be subjected to. There are inherent uncertainties in the process of modelling fire, so that complete reconstruction of a fire event and the temperature evolution - and therefore a solid determination of causality - is difficult. The methodology addressed by Torero (2011), based on a combined analysis using modern structural and fire analysis tools, certainly helps in the understanding of complex fire-induced failures and the collapse mechanism of super high-rise buildings and such research reduces the disaster risks that the world is still confronted with, whether they are induced by natural hazards or extreme terrorists.