Simulated attack

An animated visualisation created by researchers at Purdue University aims to help structural engineers understand exactly what happened during the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Christoph Hoffmann, a professor of computer science and director of Purdue's Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, said that the animation reveals more information than could be conveyed through a scientific simulation alone.

‘Scientific simulations restrict us to showing the things that are absolutely essential to the engineer,’ Hoffmann said. ‘This gives us a simulation that doesn't deliver much visual information to a layperson. Our animation takes that scientific model and adds back the visual information required to make it a more effective communication tool.’

The scientific simulation, completed last September, required several test runs before the researchers were satisfied; the final test run required more than 80 hours of high-performance computing.

The simulation depicts how a plane tore through several stories of the World Trade Center north tower within a half-second, and found that the weight of the fuel acted like a flash flood of flaming liquid, knocking out essential structural columns within the building and removing fireproofing insulation from other support structures. The simulation used lines and dots to show the aircraft and building during the event.