Aircraft Impact Analysis of New York World Trade Center Tower by Using the ASI-Gauss Technique

In this paper, a newly developed ASI-Gauss technique is applied to an aircraft impact analysis of New York World Trade Center Tower 2 (WTC2), to evaluate the structural vulnerability and behavior of the aircraft, at the horrifying scene that occurred in 2001. The ASI-Gauss technique is a modified version of the formerly developed Adaptively Shifted Integration (ASI) technique for the linear Timoshenko beam element, which computes highly accurate elasto-plastic solutions even with the minimum number of elements per member. Algorithms considering member fracture and elemental contact are also implemented. The analytical results such as damages of the tower and motion of the aircraft engines, showed good agreement with the observed data