Once
a man got a nasty sneeze and an earthquake started, occasionally at
the same time,
which destroyed a city the man threatened before. This man
was declared to
be the cause of the destruction and executed. This tragicomedical
tale reminds me
the real, recent history.
September 11, 2001 noted by the spectacular fracturing
event, the destruction of the Trade Center, has become a landmark separating
the history before and after. This fracturing event has already caused
two major wars, millions of lost or destroyed lives, economic depression,
several hundreds of billions dollars for taxpayers, and the fear spread
around the globe. Amplified by the politicians it turned into somewhat
like the biblical event of the destruction of the Tower of Babylon. Willingly
or unwillingly, the politicians have glorified the terrorists, the perpetrators
of this event, and their ideological leader Osama Bin Laden. The figure
of Osama has grown to the mythical dimension of the embodiment of Evil
proclaimed by President Bush. Now, Osama is for terrorists like Karl Marx
was for communists a century ago.
But, what analysis of this fracturing event has been done by the scientists,
experts in fracture mechanics? By those famous ones from MIT, Harvard,
Stanford and other grand universities? None, or almost none*. They gave
green light to politicians. Meanwhile, like the failures of Liberty ships
during the World War II made a road for the Griffith-Irwin fracture mechanics,
the destruction of the Trade Center should open a way for a new era in
fracture mechanics, given the proper cause-consequence analysis of this
fracturing event. How come that the plane could destroy to dust this majestic
building made of steel and superstrong glass, the mass of which was almost
a million times greater that the mass of the planes? It is like to turn
a military tank into dust by a bullet. Isn’t it impossible? “Yes,
it is impossible”, thought Osama who probably took the course of
old Griffith-Irwin fracture mechanics while studying civil engineering.
That’s why he, on his own (* No
single expert in fracture mechanics took part in the September 11 Commission
as well as, by the way, in the Commission of the Shuttle disaster)
confession, and his “brothers” terrorists did not even dream
of the destruction of the whole World Trade Center. Their suicide mission
was sooner an act of desperation intended to produce maximum noise to
attract the attention of the world to their cause of Muslim freedom. But,
they did not hope for such a destruction and glory.
It is only after September 11 that the terror has, owing to politicians,
become a real movement, tested by practice, and a real danger. (Now, Osama
probably regrets that his “brothers” did not study a smarter
way to harm using nuclear and biological means of destruction instead
of such a primitive ones. No doubt, they study them now.) Meanwhile, the
right, timely, scientific analysis of this fracturing event would have
proven that the “success” of the terror mission was due not
to the smartness of the terrorists who outwitted the CIA.
The real cause of large scale destruction is
the construction of overstressed
buildings and structures, in general. The builders and designers of such
unsafe structures bear most blame for the large scale of real or possible
destructions. New building standards are necessary based on the new era
fracture mechanics. A scientifically correct design would make the destruction
and damage a dozen times less; in other words, it would solve ninety percent
of the terror problem similar to the September 11 destruction. The scientific
approach requires much less investments than three hundred billion dollars
already spent to darn the security problem that was responsible only for
ten percent of the destruction.
The fracturing of overstressed structures occurs by fracture waves propagating
at the speed of sound in the material and is
resulted in a self-explosion of the material into a dust cloud spreading
over to the environment [1].
This kind fracturing may be initiated by a comparatively small cause that,
by itself, can produce a destruction of only a small volume, which, however,
can also create a fracture wave that can turn the whole structure into
dust, for whatever large size of the structure. Clearly, this type of
fracturing is of special danger for large scale buildings and structures.
It should be taken into account by designers and engineers of such buildings,
which has never
been the case.
This type of the fracturing of overstressed structures was called the
self-sustaining fracture [1]. It has been well
known to the miners since long ago by explosive rock bursts [1]. The theoretical
and experimental study of self-sustaining fracture began in 1967 when
it was experimentally reproduced in a laboratory on glass specimens [1].
The destruction of the Trade Center on September 11, 2001 is
nothing but the self-sustaining fracture of this building initiated by
the impact of the planes. If we will not pay attention to the scientific
study of this phenomenon to control or limit it, in the future we may
face a situation when a single sneeze can cause such, or even greater,
destruction.
[1] G.P. Cherepanov, Mechanics of Brittle Fracture, McGraw-Hill,
New York (1979) 950 pp.
More
On the Collapse of the World Trade Center
Abstract:
The generally-accepted explanation of the collapse of the
World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001 is based on the speculative
“theory” of progressive buckling of bearing columns at the
speed of free fall triggered by creep buckling of the columns of the floor
subject to the conflagration from the spilled fuel, and by dynamic impact
of the upper structure. In the present paper it is shown that this official
“theory” is wrong because it is built on false assumptions
and incorrect calculations. The “theory” cannot explain the
free fall, explosion sound, and pulverization of the buildings as well
as other facts of this event. The simultaneous collapse of the neighboring
47-story tower directly contradicts to the “theory”. It is
shown that, consistent with all known facts of the matter, the scenario
of all collapses was this: (i) heating of bearing columns in the “hot”
spot caused high compressive thermal stresses in these columns, (ii) these
stresses combined with internal stresses triggered a fracture wave, and
(iii) the fracture wave disintegrated the entire building by invisible
cracks for less than 0.1 s producing the sound of explosion and providing
the conditions necessary for free fall of steel fragments and dust clouds
of tiny fragments of glass, marble and concrete. The theory of fracture
waves, see Appendix 1, supports this scenario. The official “ theory”
is placed in Appendix 2.
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