ABSTRACT
The WTC collapse started a wide scientific debate in the engineering community about tall buildings’ design and safety measurements. Some aspects of major interest are: the investigation aimed to understand the causes of the structural failure and the identification of possible improvements in the design approach for increasing robustness of such structures under exceptional loadings. The research towards these targets necessarily must start from the examination of the original design of the WTC towers, in order to understand the approach adopted in the structural design and to assess the ensuing performance implications. In this paper elastic analyses (including P-Δ effects) on a preliminary FE model of the WTC tower 1 are carried out with the aim of assessing the behaviour of the structure under gravity and wind loads.
