Henry Imler June 20th, 2007

Simulation finds 9/11 fireproofing key

A computer simulation of the 2001 World Trade Center
attacks supports a federal agency’s findings that the initial impact
from the hijacked airplanes stripped away crucial fireproofing material
and that the weakened towers collapsed under their own weight.

The two-year Purdue University study, funded in part by the National
Science Foundation, was the first to use 3-D animation to provide
visual context to the attacks, said Christoph Hoffmann, a professor of
computer science and one of the lead researchers on the project.

Granted, the Purdue study had no where near the level of accuracy achieved by this experiment Can a jet fuel/hydrocarbon fire collapse a steel structure? An experiment.:

What I conclude is that a fairly flimsy steel structure
does not distort and bend and collapse very easily from a simple
hydrocarbon fire. And thus, it is not clear why the much stronger steel
columns in the WTC towers weakened so much from fires that the towers
underwent global collapse.

It most certainly is not clear why.

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