NIST World Trade Center Disaster Investigation

NIST experiment to replicate an office fire in the World Trade Center. Tests such as this helped validate computer models of the spread rate and intensity of the fires initiated by jet fuel and fed by the office furnishings and other combustibles. Video thumbnail shows fire test of mockup WTC office environment with multiple workstations.[1]

The NIST World Trade Center Disaster Investigation was a report that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted to establish the likely technical causes of the three building failures that occurred at the World Trade Center following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.[2] The report was mandated as part of the National Construction Safety Team Act (NCST Act), which was signed into law on October 1, 2002 by President George W. Bush. NIST issued its final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers in September 2005, and the agency issued its final report on 7 World Trade Center in November 2008.

NIST concluded that the collapse of each tower resulted from the combined effects of airplane impact damage, widespread fireproofing dislodgment, and the fires that ensued. The sequence of failures that NIST concluded initiated the collapse of both towers involved the heat-induced sagging of floor trusses pulling some of the exterior columns on one side of each tower inward until they buckled, after which instability rapidly spread and the upper sections then fell onto the floors below.[3] 7 World Trade Center, which was never directly hit by an airplane, collapsed as a result of thermal expansion of steel beams and girders that were heated by uncontrolled fires caused by the collapse of the North Tower and failure of the fire-resistive material.[4]

  1. ^ "Office fire test replication". NIST. 22 June 2007. Retrieved 11 September 2022. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  2. ^ "NIST's Responsibility Under the National Construction Safety Team Act" (PDF). www.nist.gov. November 2012. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-12-29.
  3. ^ Banovic, S.W.; Foecke, T.; Luecke, W.E.; McColskey, J.D.; McCowan, C.N.; Siewert, T.A.; Gayle, F.W. (2007-11-01). "The role of metallurgy in the NIST investigation of the World Trade Center towers collapse". JOM. 59 (11): 22–30. Bibcode:2007JOM....59k..22B. doi:10.1007/s11837-007-0136-y. ISSN 1047-4838. S2CID 54171175.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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