Floor Truss Bracket
Floor Truss Bracket
Previous
Next
Usage conditions apply
- Description
- Description: This damaged structural bracket from the World Trade Center was recovered from the debris pile.
- Context: This viscoelastic damper connected a floor truss to an exterior steel column of the World Trade Center. Building movement caused by wind was a major concern to the architects and engineers designing the 110-story towers. They cleverly mitigated apparent building movement by using these dampers to allow the exterior of the building to sway slightly under wind load, while the floor remained largely stationary.
- The damper and other floor attachment brackets were also a point of failure leading to the towers' collapse. When the intense fire heated the 60 foot-long floor trusses, they eventually distorted and pulled free of their attachments to the exterior columns. As the upper floors of the towers fell, the weight then “pancaked” the lower floors, breaking floor truss attachments unaffected by heat. Each of these huge towers collapsed in about ten seconds.
- Location
- Currently on loan
- Object Name
- Floor Truss Bracket
- Date made
- late 1960s/early 1970s
- place made
- United States: New York, Manhattan, World Trade Center
- recovered
- United States: New York, Manhattan, World Trade Center
- Measurements
- overall: 6 in x 9 in x 17 in; 15.24 cm x 22.86 cm x 43.18 cm
- ID Number
- 2002.0205.04
- accession number
- 2002.0205
- subject
- September 11 Terrorist Attacks
- Attack on the World Trade Center
- September 11th Attacks
- See more items in
- Political and Military History: Armed Forces History, 9/11
- September 11
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
Nominate this object for photography.
Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.
If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.
