WHY BUILDINGS FALL DOWN How Structures Fail MATTHYS LEVY and MARIO SALVADORI KEVIN WOEST W + W- NORTON & COMPANY New York London© 1987 BMG Songs, Inc. and Don Schlitz Music/MCA Music. Used by permission. All rights reserved. “Strong Enough to Bend.” Words and music by Don Schlitz and Beth Nielson Chapman. © Copyright 1988 by MCA Music Publishing, a Division of MCA Inc., Don. Schlitz Music and Uncle Artie Music, a division of The MTM Music Group. Rights ot Don Schlitz Music administered by MCA Music Publishing, a division of MCA Inc., New York, New York 10019. Used by permission. All rights reserved Copyright © 1992 by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori Mlustrations Copyright © 1992 by Kevin Woest All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The text of this book is composed in Aster with the display set in Avant Garde Gothic Manufacturing by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group. Book design by Jacques Chazaud Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Levy, Matthys. ‘Why buildings fall down: how structures fail / Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori. pcm. Includes index. 1. Building failures, 2. Structural failures. I. Levy, Matthys, 1929 Salvadori, Mario George, 1907- IL. Title TH4d1148 1992 690". 21—de20 91-34954 ISBN 0-393-03356-2 Norton & Company, inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WCIA IPU 4567890To the memory of my mother-in-law, Judith Book- man, who, upon receiving on her ninety-second birthday the first copy of Why Buildings Stand Up, said mattcr-of-factly: “This is nice, but I would be much more interested in reading why they fall down.” Mario G. SaLvaport To the children yet unborn For whom discovering the past Will open the door to the future. Mattuys P. LevyContents PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. The First Structural Failure Miracle on Thirty fourth Street Will the Pantheon Stand Up Forever? For Lack of Redundancy BANS NR Big Bangs a 7. Gaiioping Gertie When Metals Tire nin Thruways to Eternity Il 138g CONTENTS 10. The Weaknesses of Mother Earth 149 11. Valley of Tears 161 12. The House of Cards 173 13. Structural Dermatology 183 14. Old-Age Death 207 15. The Worst Structural Disaster in the United States 221 16. The Politics of Destruction 231 17. The Structure of the Law 242 18. Conclusion: Can We Prevent Future Failures? 257 APPENDICES A. Loads 269 B. Stress and Strain 277 C. Structural Materials 280 D. Structural Systems 283 INDEX 315Preface It seemed almost unavoidable that having written a book entitled Why Buildings Stand Up, I should be pushed by my friends (and my wonderfully friendly editor, Edwin Barber) to write another called— what else?—Why Buildings Fall Down. T have at long last given in to the temptation of explaining structural failures in lay language, a simple but exciting task, but only because the coauthor of another of my books, Matthys Levy, a master of structural design, has enthusiastically accepted to write it with me. He and | can apply eighty-five years of design and teaching experience, and sixty of investigations into structural failures, to the job of helping us relieve the fears of the uninitiated, while tak- ing the reader on an interesting and, we hope, entertaining trip that will make the reader see buildings as never before: with a clear understanding of why ina blue moon. they fall down. | up and why, yes, Mario SalvadoriAcknowledgments Besides those we might have unjustly forgotten, we thank the fol- lowing friends who helped us bring this book into print and do this in an alphabetical order that is not to be interpreted as a hierarchy of gratitude: Edwin F. Barber, our patient, friendly, encouraging, and skillful master editor Mindy Hepner, our word-processing expert who almost allowed us to meet our schedule Julie Hubley Levy, understanding critic, enthusiastic and loving supporter Landon Prieur, the Weidlinger Associates librarian, who ferreted out valuable hidden sources of information Carol B. Salvadori, private editor and copy reader to one of us, ct English all the I e chapters ot this book Erica Vogi and Weidlinger Associates, who, unbelievably, succeeded in putting this book together. dye Ester man, our cairaurdinary seciciaries atIntroduction Once upon a time there were Seven Wonders of the World. Now only one survives: the mountainlike Pyramid of Khufu in the Egyp- tian desert near Cairo. The other six have fallen down. It is the destiny of the man-made environment to vanish, but we, short lived men and women, look at our buildings so con- vinced they will stand forever that when some do collapse, we are surprised and concerned. Our surprise may be partly due to the fact that most of us judge buildings by their facades: They look beautiful when very old and ugly when very young, the opposite of human faces. But this kind of judgment is superficial and misleading; a much better metaphor for a building is the human body. A building is conceived when designed, burn when built, alive xpected a xpected af age or a! breathes through the mouth ot its windows and the lungs ot its air- conditioning sysiem. it circulates fluids through the veins and arteries of its pipes and sends messages to all parts of its body through the nervous system of its electric wires. A building reacts14 INTRODUCTION to changes in its outer or inner conditions through its brain of feed- back systems, is protected by the skin of its facade, supported by the skeleton of its columns, beams, and slabs, and rests on the feet of its foundations. Like most human bodies, most buildings have full lives, and then they die. The accidental death of a building is always due to the failure of its skeleton, the structure. Since the readers of this book are interested in learning why buildings fall down, they expect from us an explanation of structural failures. But just as medical doc- ler health to be the norm and disease the exception, and gain most of their knowledge from illness, so engineers consider standing buildings the norm and structural failures the exception, although they learn a lot from failures. Our readers then should know why almost all buildings stand up. This may appear a diffi- cult task. Buildings serve so many purposes and come in so many shapes. They consist of so many materials meant to resist so many kinds of loads and forces. How can a mere layperson understand how structures work? Luckily one need not be an expert. Structural behavior can be understood by the uninitiated on the basis of physical intuition and without appeal to physics or mathematics simply because whatever the structural system—the steel frame of an office build- ing or the dome of a church—whatever the materials used in con- struction—steel, wood, reinforced concrete, or stone—and whatever the forces acting on it—caused by gravity, wind, earthquake, tem- perature changes, or uneven settlements of the soil—the elements of a structure can react to these forces only by being pulled or pushed. Come along with us then on this voyage of discovery. Once you appreciate how structures behave, you will also learn that as if they had a social duty toward us, structures always do their very best nut to fall down. The readers eager to acquire a better understanding of why almost all buildings stand up may refer to the appendices of this book, where the basic behavior of structures is explained in simple fF he tors con phys-WHY BUILDINGS FALL DOWNThe First Structural Failure If you wish to control the future, study the past Confucius ccording to the Old Testament, the early inhabitants of the earth, the ancient Babylonians, were “of one language, and of one speech.” Linguists, with the help of archaeol- ogists, paleontologists, and geneticists, have been able to reconstruct between 150 and 200 words of this Babylonian-claimed proto-world language, the earliest we know of in humanity's one iower reaching heaven, and God, offended by their pride, broke their single speech into so many different languages that the Bab- ylonians, unable to understand one another, were stymied in their