- Webinar No: WBNR-1147
- PDH Units: 2
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Intended Audience: All Engineers
Credits: 2 PDH Units
When: Wednesday 9/11. 2 - 4 pm EST
We promise you a very special webinar . This is not your ordinary boring ethics webinar. We are very proud to bring this webinar to you. This Engineering Ethics Webinar on the tragic collapse of the World Trade Center towers first discusses the engineering aspects of design, construction, and the damage due to the planes’ impact and the ensuing fire. Then, Dr. Astaneh summarizes his findings of several weeks he spent in New York, supported by the National Science Foundation, to conduct reconnaissance and collection of perishable data and more than five years of analytical studies of the collapse that followed. The second part of the Webinar will focus on engineering ethics and discuss the ethical problems of the collapse investigation by a team organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers and funded by FEMA. Dr. Astaneh spent a year (2001-2002) investigating and documenting the debris from the WTC collapsed towers, which included three weeks in New York and New Jersey investigating actual steel members and connections of the collapsed 110-story towers. Then, in May 2002, he testified before the Committee on Science of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress on his findings. After hearing his testimony, the Committee on Science provided him with the drawings of the WTC Towers so he could continue his studies of the engineering aspects of the collapse. The drawings of the WTC Towers were, and still are, under the seal, with no public access. Having received the drawings, Dr. Astaneh and his team of volunteers spent five years (2002-2007) and more than 4,000 hours performing structural analysis of the impact of airplanes on the north tower. The main conclusion of the studies was that the unique and unusual structural system used in the World Trade Center, which was “Steel Bearing Walls,” without a “framing system” used in both WTC towers, was at the root of their collapse. Because of the thin steel bearing walls, the airplane easily entered the towers almost intact. It delivered a large amount of jet fuel to the core of the building, starting a fire that caused a reduction in the strength of the outside Steel building, leading to the towers' collapse. References and Recommended Further Readings:
- World Trade Center Archives from Professor A. Astaneh, Website at: https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/wtc/ The above site contains Professor Astaneh’s documents, photos, reports, PowerPoints, and other material he generated from the investigation of the World Trade Center collapse sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
- WTC Steel Wreckage at Claremont Scrapyard Feat. Dr. Astaneh-Asl, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aeoZrHpD_E
- World Trade Center: Anatomy of the Collapse” (TLC, 2002) on DVD. com.
- Fresh Air’s Terry Gross Interview with Prof. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl on His WTC Reconnaissance, Public Broadcasting System, 22:13 minutes Audio Broadcast, https://freshairarchive.org/segments/abolhassan-astaneh-asl
- WTC Hearing of Committee on Science of U.S. House of RepresentativesHearing (with Dr. Astaneh-Asl testifying his findings), https://www.c-span.org/video/?168982-1/world-trade-center-collapse
- Code of Ethics for Professional Engineers, by National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.nspe.org/sites/default/files/resources/pdfs/Ethics/CodeofEthics/NSPECodeofEthicsforEngineers.pdf
- NSPE Ethics Reference Guidechrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.nspe.org/sites/default/files/resources/pdfs/Ethics/EthicsReferenceGuide.pdf
- ASCE Code of Ethics chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.asce.org/-/media/asce-images-and-files/career-and-growth/ethics/documents/asce-code-ethics.pdf
- Ethics, Technology, and Engineering, a textbook by Ibo van de Poel and Lambèr Royakkers, Wily-Blackwell, 2011.
- Concepts and Cases-Engineering Ethics,a textbook by Charles E. Harris et al., published by Cengage2019.
Date: Thursday. September 11. 2024. Starts: 2 - 4 pm ET Credits: 2 PDH Units
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of the course, the student should understand:- What was the “unusual” structural system of the World Trade Center Towers? It was a Steel Bearing Wall.
- What were the Fire Protection Systems in the WTC Towers, and were they adequate?
- Were the exits and staircases in the WTC Towers adequate for timely evacuation in case of a fire?
- Was the structure designed for the impact of a plane, as the designers claimed? It was not.
- Was there any evidence of an explosion or blast, as the conspiracy theorist claims? The answer is no.
- What was the engineering cause of the collapse?
- Would the same towers, designed using a known structural system instead of the unusual Steel Bearing Walls, survive the attack? The answer is yes.
- How the “conflict of interest” in the ASCE Building Performance Assessment Team members investigating the performance and tragic September 11, 2001 collapse of the World Trade Center towers prevented finding the actual engineering cause, which was the use of “Steel Bearing Wall” system, which was very vulnerable to fires.
This course on the technical details of the World Trade Center collapse and subsequent investigation by Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is the best PE licensing course on engineering ethics I’ve ever taken. By focusing on Dr. Astaneh-Asl’s actual experience investigating the collapse and the obstacles he faced in his attempts to uncover and publish the truth as he was tasked to find, this course is a profound study in the personal, professional, institutional, and social pressure an engineer can face in trying to do their job to the best of their ability based on their training and expertise. As someone who thought I knew the basics of why the towers collapsed, I can say that I was shocked to learn things that a majority of the public (and many engineers like me) simply do not know. Dr. Astaneh-Asl has done a great service to our nation over many years in studying the true nature of why the towers collapsed and in publishing and explaining his findings.
Excellent presentation.
Previous reviews in 2021 indicated the ethics issues were weak, however this year the presentation really exposed the unethical behavior of the owner, design firm, and the ASCE as well as conflicts of interest. Well done Dr. Astaneh-Asi!
Excellent Course! While I was studying Architectural Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University I had the fortunate opportunity to tour the building during construction with one of the structural engineers on the project design team. It struck me at the time that the floor plate was very open with no stars at the perimeter. When the building collapsed after the plane strike, I immediately thought the “tubular” configuration of the structure, and questionable connections between the bar joists and exterior steel wall contributed to the “pancaking” of the floors on top of each other. I was surprised that there was no repercussions toward the designers since the design clearly contributed the catastrophic failure.
The webinar was very informative and contain a lot of information I have never heard of before.
Wonderful Presentation Thank you
I am a PE and also a heavy construction contractor. My company had 7 active projects in the towers in progress at the time of the collapse. I was very familiar with the towers and yet I knew so little.
I was skeptical. So much has been written & posted about the WTC collapse, so what more could be said? Dr. Astaneh does not hold back and demonstrates how many people and institutions failed us. To date, he’s the only person with copies of the drawings who has not signed an NDA. He could easily expand this 2-hr presentation into 12 or more 20-minute videos and get many, many views on YouTube.
Very interesting and excellent presentation
The collapse was boiled down to fundamental structural engineering. I real really enjoyed it.
Informative course, although the ethical issues component of the presentation seemed to be more of a ‘throw-in’ towards the end. As a NYer who witnessed a number of funerals in the days and weeks that followed, and had the heartache of attending one, it resonated deeply.
I had no idea of the potential role that the design/detailing may have played in the collapse of the WTC Twin Towers until I took this course. The finite element model comparison of the aircraft striking the WTC versus a conventionally-framed alternative was particularly enlightening.
Overall a very good presentation but I thought the ethics issues were very weak. The PDH website on the other had was horrible and often not responsive
Very interesting presentation and i enjoyed the post presentation Q&A dialogue
Material presented was very informative. However, I would have liked to see a stronger tie to the Ethical Issues.
I finally figured out after how to get to the quiz for the seminar. Not easy. The certificate prints terrible. Lettering overlaps other lettering, the background should be on a light gray tone of sorts. You need to fix your site. I don’t think I will use you again for other courses.