Simulation Insights for Safer Structures

When two airplanes hit the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001, no one could predict how the Twin Towers would react structurally. The commercial jet airliners severed columns and started fires, weakening steel beams, and causing a “pancaking,” progressive collapse.

Skyscrapers had not been designed or constructed with that kind of catastrophic structural failure in mind. IEEE Senior Member Sena Kizildemir is changing that through disaster simulation, one scenario at a time.