To the extent that it claims to apply to WTC Twin Towers the paper is nonsense.
Unfortunately it shares with a lot of academic "explanations" of WTC collapse one feature:
It has no mechanism which remotely resembles what actually happened with the 'Twins' and, for some reason which I cannot comprehend, academics such as these two seem to think that complex formulas or FEA's or whatever theory they are pushing are of value and over-ride what really happened. I have news for such theoreticians - first they should not be let loose outside their cloisters of academia - but let's stay polite and leave out references to the faeces of the male bovine......
Put politely I disagree. Any theoretical explanation which ignores reality will IMNSHO either be:
1) Wrong; OR
2) Right for the wrong reasons and therefore even more misleading.
...and I have not seen a example of 'right for the wrong reasons' in this sort of paper.
Put more explicitly the single specific reason that the paper is nonsense is that it considers column resistance as a main factor. Reality of 9/11 was that post 'initiation' of collapse column resistance was not a significant factor. And that bit of reality is the key to understanding the global collapses of the twins. People who do not recognise that simple reality are bound to be wrong. These two academics are wrong.
Next question.
PS - The terseness of the above reflects Friday PM after a tiring week and most way through a bottle of wine.
More detailed explanation available if needed -
PPS Oystein already did a better job of the engineering part of the explanation - He is right and has identified the key issues.
