CASE STUDY ON EXISTING STEEL STRUCTURE

WORLD TRADE CENTER, TWIN TOWERS (1973 - 2001)

ARC 431 LOGIC OF STRUCTURES

2061709 RISHIGANESH S N
LOCATION : The complex—located at the southwestern tip of Manhattan, near the

shore of the Hudson River and a few blocks northwest of Wall Street

285 Fulton Street Manhattan, New York City, U.S

The North Tower rose 1,368 feet (417 in meters)—1,730 feet with a large
GEOGRAPHY :
antenna—and the South Tower stood 1,362(415 in meters) feet high.

Each had 110 Floors.

Ar. Minoru Yamasaki, Ar.Emery Roth

ARCHITECTS :

STRUCTURAL

ENGINEER : Leslie E. Robertson

CONSTRUCTIO

N COMPANY : Tishman Realty & Construction Company

YEARS OF Groundbreaking for the construction oN August 5, 1966.

Construction work began on the North Tower in August 1968, and

CONSTRUCTION :
construction on the South Tower was under way by January 1969.

he topping out ceremony of 1 WTC (North Tower) on December

23, 1970, while 2 WTC's ceremony (South Tower) on July 19, 1971.

HISTORICAL
No Historical Development were happened

DEVELOPMENT : *But, After the September 11th attacks (7/11) on the World Trade

Center, the rescue and recovery clean-up of the 1.8 million tons

of wreckage from the WTC site took 9 months.

NEIGHBORHOOD

CONTEXT : The area became New York City's Radio Row, which existed from

1921 to 1966. The neighborhood was a warehouse district in what

is now Tribeca and the Financial District.

DESIGN PROCESS & CONSTRUCTION DETAILS :

The towers were designed as framed tube structures which is in

Steel, which is basically a Lightweight Perimeter.

Provided tenants with open floor plans, uninterrupted by columns or

walls.

This was accomplished using numerous closely spaced perimeter

columns to provide much of the strength to the structure, along with
gravity load shared with the core columns.

The exterior walls were built of closely spaced steel columns to

perform as load bearing walls and the interior columns were

located only in the core area containing the elevators.

lightweight steel structure; however, its has

The WTC was primarily a

244 perimeter columns made it “one of the most redundant and

one of the most resilient” skyscrapers
How was the Technology of Constuction Used stood Unique In WTC ?

There were two main factors that greatly distinguished the two main

towers of the World Trade Center from anything that had been built before

them: their walls and their elevators.

Prior to the construction of the Twin Towers, skyscrapers were designed to

support themselves through large internal columns spaced about 30 feet (9

meters) apart, which interrupted the flow of interior space. For this project

the exterior
however, the engineers came up with a different solution --

walls themselves would support the bulk of the structure, and they
would get a boost from one single column of beams in the center.

This allowed for a much more open plan on every floor of the building,

which not only had aesthetic value but had financial worth as well -- the

more floor space, the higher the rent the buildings' owners could collect.

Adding to the creation of open floor plans was the design of the
elevators.

IMPORTANCE OF STEEL :

For the columns that comprised the walls, a mixture of 12

different types of steel with yield points between 42,000
pound per square inch (psi) and 100,000 psi were used, while

the interior columns consisted of a steel known as A36, a

designation which meant it had a yield strength of 36,000 psi.

The thickness of these columns also varied, narrowly spaced,

on each side of the buildings.

In all, 200,000 tons of super-strong steel (which had just

recently become available in 1968) were used to create the two

towers

The major structural material used in the towers was A36

structural steel, although higher strength steel was used in the

lower elevations of the structure. Except for some selected

floors, for which normal strength concrete was used, the

composite slabs were made of a 21MPa lightweight concrete. HAT TRUSS

WHY DID THE TWIN TOWER COLLAPSED ?

Nearly every large building has a redundant design that allows for loss of one primary
structural member, such as a column.

However, when multiple members fail, the shifting loads eventually overstress the
adjacent members and the collapse occurs like a row of dominoes falling down.

SITE PLAN ELEVATION

 Thank
! you !
REFERENCES :

https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/world-trade-center-construction-
unique.htm

https://www.archdaily.com/504682/ad-classics-world-trade-center-minoru-yamasaki-
associates-emery-roth-and-sons

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2021/911-anniversary.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_World_Trade_Center

https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_(1973%E2%80%932001)