WTC Challenge

Originally posted by Jeremiah_John
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Also, the WTC was constructed much like the Broadgate building, which underwent a very serious fire in 1990. The flooring was corrugated metal with concrete on top over trusses - which should sound familiar to WTC conspiracists.



Here's a picture of how they looked after a four hour fire with extremely high temperatures. Not bad. Of course it doesn't look exactly like WTC did, but it gives an idea. What would have given a great idea of the WTC would have been for NIST to replicate the damaged floors and burn them instead of guessing through pictures, which is exactly what 'pod missile laser' conspiracists are doing also.

JJ, you just contradicted yourself there, buddy.

First you state that "the WTC was constructed much like the Broadgate building."

Then your show a picture of what is obviously a conventional short span beam and column construction, not a lightweight, long span truss construction of the type that was used in the WTC.

One more example of trying to compare apples and oranges.


Look at how much that thick column deflected and think about what would have happened to the much thinner crossectioned long span trusses under the same conditions.

[edit on 8-7-2005 by HowardRoark]

Originally posted by Sauron
Not very similar to WTC 1, 2, 6, & 7


This is what happens when a building collapses from a cause other than controlled demolition.

So are you trying to compare the performance of relatively short, reinforced concrete buildings built in earthquake zones, that collapsed as a result of an earthquake with the lightweight construction of the much taller WTC buildings?

Do you think that there is a structural engineer anywhere in the world that will agree with you that the buildings should have performed the same way in spite of totally different structural designs and totally different collapse causes (ie. an earthquake versus an airplane crash and fire)?

More importantly, if you do find a structural engineer that agrees with you, would you actually dare to set foot in a building that he designed?



[edit on 8-7-2005 by HowardRoark]

Originally posted by Jeremiah_John

Originally posted by CatHerder
I see absolutely no evidence of any external load bearing walls like the WTC, I see a standard steel/concrete frame building.

WTC didn't have external load-bearing walls.

Wrong, The exterior walls of the WTC bore a significant portion of the building loads.

This is a steel-framed building in the picture.

Wrong, the Windsor tower core was built with reinforced concrete columns. The WTC had steel columns.

HR! What a surprise! You come back after an absence skip rebutting my post completely! Or maybe saving it for last? Somehow I don't think so. An honest mistake, I'm sure.

www.abovetopsecret.com... , 2nd to last post.

There you go! Now you'll surely see it and respond. You'll find an incomplete sentence in there, that reads "And even if the fires were hot enough, why didn't they collapse earlier on when there was a". I don't know what happened there, so just ignore that fragment. Otherwise, there you go.

I can also repost the information if you choose to forget or ignore any of it upon posting a response.

[edit on 8-7-2005 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by HowardRoark
You would think so, but that is not really the case.
WTC Cubicle fire test
Also, one a fire hits the flashover point, everything burns.

From that link (which is just a report on NIST tests):

Using a cubicle based on the offices of insurance firm Marsh & McLennan - a north tower tenant that lost 295 employees - federal fire experts conclude it was more likely the heat of burning office materials brought down the tower, rather than jet-fuel-fed flames.

This test, conducted by National Institute of Standards and Technology last month, showed the fuel from the plane that crashed into the tower burned out quickly - but the fire it created grew in intensity by up to another 300 degrees as it consumed office products and structures.

The computers, cubicle walls, furniture, files and paper - recreated on detailed information supplied by the insurance company on the exact materials used in their offices - blazed at temperatures that reached 1,200 degrees, the NIST test found.

The test fire burned for 33 minutes before the 386 pounds of material were consumed and reduced mostly to ash and gases.

Since when does jet fuel burn out quickly but fuel paper and chipboard tables to increase in heat to the point of melting steel, even thou the tempurature achieved in this test is well below the stress levels of heat for steel???

NOTHING in an office will burn hotter than jet fuel or even close to a point which will melt steel, this test even proves that! Steel doesn't even begin to soften until over 1350 degrees C (2500°F). The tempurature NIST have measured is not enough to do anything to the WTC structure, let along in the small amount of time it was burning.

The fact that after 33 minutes in the NIST test, their office all turned to ash and gases adds to the fact that there were fireman reporting the fires contained in WTC. It confirms the fires were undercontrol because there was little left to fuel a fire and there's photos and videos of people standing in the gash the plane left without any fires or smoke near them to also prove that. Office furniture is either going to melt and what does burn is not going to burn hotter than jet fuel, after the jet fuel is spent, for less than an hour and cause a steel framed building to come down. It's never happened before so why should it be reasonable to consider on 9/11?

I don't buy it, NIST are just throwing around assumptions because they have to find a solution which explains a theory other than what the firemen on the day reported - bombs.

Did NIST in this test actually prove an office can melt steel when their test showed that an office will turn to ash in 33 minutes in tempuratures lower than required to even begin to make steel pliable or did they just assume that must of been what happened when after 33 minutes there was no fuel left for the fires to keep burning?
How much steel did they actually weaken or melt in that office to ash test?

This 'test' is just insulting if it's trying to prove fire brought down the towers.




[edit on 8-7-2005 by TheShroudOfMemphis]

Originally posted by HowardRoark
So are you trying to compare the performance of relatively short, reinforced concrete buildings built in earthquake zones, that collapsed as a result of an earthquake with the lightweight construction of the much taller WTC buildings?

Do you think that there is a structural engineer anywhere in the world that will agree with you that the buildings should have performed the same way in spite of totally different structural designs and totally different collapse causes (ie. an earthquake versus an airplane crash and fire)?

More importantly, if you do find a structural engineer that agrees with you, would you actually dare to set foot in a building that he designed?

[edit on 8-7-2005 by HowardRoark]

Howard these building fell for what ever reasons, just as WTC. Why did these buildings and contents not turn into dust?
Hint no explosives

Originally posted by HowardRoark


Wrong, The exterior walls of the WTC bore a significant portion of the building loads.

Prove it.

Oh wait - you can't. The public and NIST don't have access to the blueprints.

Some say there were load bearing. Others say there were for lateral loads.

Want to argue anecdotal evidence all day?

NIST didn't have access to the blueprints. Public doesn't have access to the blueprints.

The only thing we know for sure is that a report on a building collapse that didn't use the buildings blueprints, didn't try to prove its theories, and examined (not too closely) 0.05 of the building doesn't prove a damn thing.

Which begs to the question - why such a lackluster investigation of the biggest structural failure in US history?

If a real investigation was done, I can't help but imagine that 90% of the conspiracy theories would never have started. It makes me angry that tax dollars are spent on something that proves nothing and solves no answers.

It pisses me off, because I spend a lot of time thinking about the collapses. But without blueprints, without good analysis of the materials, how can someone make a decision? It's impossible.

Physical evidence - gone, recycled. Paper evidence - undisclosed. NIST report useless in the extreme. All we are left with is video. And watching video to determine something leads to all types of cloud formation and guestimation.

Like I said, no one can objectively say that fire or demolition brought the towers down unless someone recreates them in some way. But one thing we can be sure of is that the removal of the scrap metal and the shoddy investigation are criminal in their own rights.

The structural integrity of the World Trade Center depends on the closely spaced columns around the perimeter. Lightweight steel trusses span between the central elevator core and the perimeter columns on each floor. These trusses support the concrete slab of each floor and tie the perimeter columns to the core, preventing the columns from buckling outwards.

However, as fire raged in the upper floors, the heat would have been gradually affecting the behaviour of the remaining material. As the planes had only recently taken off, the fire would have been initially fuelled by large volumes of jet fuel, which then ignited any combustible material in the building. While the fire would not have been hot enough to melt any of the steel, the strength of the steel drops markedly with prolonged exposure to fire, while the elastic modulus of the steel reduces (stiffness drops), increasing deflections.


www.civil.usyd.edu.au...

Originally posted by HowardRoark

First you state that "the WTC was constructed much like the Broadgate building."

Then your show a picture of what is obviously a conventional short span beam and column construction, not a lightweight, long span truss construction of the type that was used in the WTC.

One more example of trying to compare apples and oranges.


Look at how much that thick column deflected and think about what would have happened to the much thinner crossectioned long span trusses under the same conditions.

[edit on 8-7-2005 by HowardRoark]

No contradiction. That's the best fire example I can find where a corrugated floor supported by a truss is photographed after a severe fire. So the floor and the truss are much like the WTC construction. Not identical, but much like.

Yeah that column contracted quite a bit. The fires were two different things entirely, though. And I have thought about what would happen with WTC trusses. I've thought about it for the past couple years. Answer is:

There's no possible way to know for sure without replicating the building from official blueprints and then recreating the accident. Whether this is done on a smaller scale or what, without physical evidence remaining it's the only way.

Until then you can only count on apples and oranges.

I don’t know guys, if you heat steel to 1000 degrees I do know that it loses a lot of it's strength/rigidity and can bend easier (it glows red too). I'm very doubtful any steel "melted" on the floors where these fires were occurring, but I wouldn't doubt that there was a lot of weakened steel (especially with the weight of the floors above, and the weight of the airliner on a few floors, on top of it). From the amount of paper debris I saw on the streets of Manhattan after those buildings came down (some places literally 12 to 18 inches deep) I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the floors were in the top 1/3 of load capacity to begin with. A lot of the trading firms on the top floors were a "paper society" and not a paperless society.

Wood burns at around 800-900 degrees while plastics burn at anywhere from 800 to 1300 degrees. I'd be willing to bet there was a decent amount of both on each floor (plastics and wood/paper/etc). There was certainly the potential to have a 1000-degree fire in places on those floors. The black smoke that seems to always be present, even after most of the jet's fuel would have burned away, makes me suspect there was a fair amount of plastics as a fire source (carpet, curtains, office furniture, phones, photocopiers, fax machines, monitors, etc) in those buildings.

Just some thoughts.

If you read the 9/11 transcripts from security, fire, etc. you'll see there were a lot of fires including on one the 22nd floor in A tower from jet fuel running down elevator shafts and access wells, gas lines were broken and there were numerous reports of gas leaks on higher levels, water mains were broken and there were lower floors flooded, sprinklers in higher levels were not working, the place was a mess. I don't know how people keep insisting that there weren't any real fires or fuel sources in the towers other than the jet fuel. (I don’t know if I'm just goofy, but I've been finding that reading all these transcripts really compelling...)

I also don't see (so far) any reports of explosions in the basements of either tower.

If the fires were hot enough to be feeding off of those materials, wouldn't they have spread to other parts of the building? Ie, other floors? Because they didn't really, besides things like fire going down the elevator shaft you mentioned. In other famous building fires, fires of such heat did use those things as sources of fuel and spread to other floors of the building.

Those other fires also shattered windows as they spread around the floors (fires such as the ones posted in pictures here). Those other fires were well above the temperatures needed to do that (around 600 degrees C at least). You'll notice that didn't happen at the WTC complex, either. Those are both clear indications that the fire wasn't doing that great, and then the fact that the smoke would later turn black (simply an indication of soot from a lack of oxygen) is a clear indication that the fires then began to die out before collapse considering that they were never at the appropriate temperatures for otherwise, unless somehow they also magically stayed confined to one area and not break any windows while raging at such temps.

Those things are obvious, and clearly observable, and yet they go right up in the face of the official report. It just doesn't make sense that fires of the alleged temperatures would do so little damage, let alone cause the buildings to suddenly collapse as they were dying.

[edit on 9-7-2005 by bsbray11]

I've always had this thought also, of fire ..........

The biggest claim of heat causing structural damage, resulting in the collapse, is that there was so much jet fuel. When one views the video of the jet impacting, one can see a huge billow of fire, much akin to the billowing effect of Napalm. My thought is, just how much of that fuel would be left after that initial explosion? It's not like tank 1 exploded, but tank 2 only ruptured to coat the floors its with fuel.

Basically, a truely un-answerable question, but I have not seen it brought up, so I thought I would.

Misfit

The way the tanks are spread throughout the plane it's possible that you saw just what was carried in one wing exploding out the building, and the other wing and fuselage tanks were spread inside the building. If I remember my tank placement correctly, and I'm pretty sure I do, you have two wing tanks, outboard and inboard, and three fuselage tanks. The wings are always filled, the forward and aft body are filled depending on weight and balance requirements, and the center wing tank is filled so that the center of gravity isn't too far forward or aft, with cargo containers acting as ballast. With all five tanks, the 767 carries almost 24,000 gallons, so they probably had the wings partially filled, and the center body tank filled, and used the cargo as forward/aft ballast. Of course there' s no way of knowing how much fuel actually blew out the building, but I'm willing to bet it was at most half of what they were carrying, just due to the placement of the fuel tanks.

[edit on 9-7-2005 by Zaphod58]

Originally posted by Misfit
My thought is, just how much of that fuel would be left after that initial explosion? It's not like tank 1 exploded, but tank 2 only ruptured to coat the floors its with fuel.
Basically, a truely un-answerable question, but I have not seen it brought up, so I thought I would.
Misfit

Well, funnily enough Howard provided a link quoting NIST which actually states they DON'T believe the jet fuel was what brought the towers down, seems like they've realised thats a dead end so they are steaming home strong with the 'office supplies' did it - even when their own test turns an office to ash in 33 minutes and doesn't burn at a heat that could affect steel in that short of time.

federal fire experts conclude it was more likely the heat of burning office materials brought down the tower, rather than jet-fuel-fed flames.
Link

It's Howard's link by the way.






[edit on 9-7-2005 by TheShroudOfMemphis]

Think about what happens when metal is heated up...

Imagine a piece of steel under stress, getting hotter from fire...

Now picture what you think would happen...

1. Would it keep supporting the weight until it hit a certain temperature and then suddenly fail?

Or

2. Would it begin to bend under the stress as it reached a high enough temp to soften it...

For the WTC building to have collapsed in pancake fashion due to the steel supports failing from heat, the answer would have to be number one.
And all supports would have had to fail at the same time...

Am I missing something here? Does steel act in a different way when an aircraft collision is involved? Maybe the steel had built in weak spots designed to fail before the rest?....

# the "official reports"...They are just trying to cover their # with irrelevant technical details. That are designed to satisfy the average citizen that their government is not attacking them to further it's agenda of power and control ( They wouldn't do that, would they? ) Obviously their methods work well on some people.
And the reason you don't get too many official people coming fwd is fear and doubt. A person in an official position would basically be giving up their life to come fwd...People don't take that stuff lightly.
And the chance of anyone in government knowing enough of the whole picture to come fwd, with no doubts in their mind, is pretty damned slim don't ya think?

Sry if I'm repeating stuff already mentioned, but if so, obviously people didn't get it the first time....

[edit on 9/7/2005 by ANOK]

Originally posted by TheShroudOfMemphis
Well, funnily enough Howard provided a link quoting NIST which actually states they DON'T believe the jet fuel was what brought the towers down

[snip]

I have read enough about NIST to decide that I don't want to read anymore about NIST, heh.

I hear ya on the flip flop about the cause. Kinda sounds like GWub flip floppin' on why we are at war, hmm?

Fuel
Office

Osama
US Attacked.

Being things of larger scale comes in 3's [world persons deaths, winning game streaks. etc], I wonder what gov flip flop will be the finale'?

Care to practice speculatativism on that?

[practice huh? ]

Misfit

Or it could be that SOME of the supports bent and warped, and other supports didn't, because the fire was unevenly spread, until you have a combination of 1 and 2. Some bent and lost strength, putting more of a load and more stress on the undamaged beams, until they suddenly failed from all the added stress on them. If you look at the fall of one of the towers, I can't remember which it was, when it starts to fall it actually leans on one side at first, like the support columns on that side failed first, then the stress of it leaning caused the other side to go right after. So it could be BOTH 1 and 2 in your question. Some bent, some just failed.

Just ran across a nice enlarged pic of the initial stage of collapse. Notice apx 11 stories down from the collapse in progress [@ 1 pane = 1 floor /// collapse is above the line of building sight] - you'll see the floor always in question as to the debris exiting it, this shot really puts the conspiracy ideas forefront. Can't quite say the energy against the structure bypassed apx 11 stories, to then continue with it's destructive force. I am also puzzled by, lower frame / direction of debris, a cluster of apparent debris, but nothing below it and nothing above it til the mail cloud of debris. Makes ya go hmmm.

Misfit



[Edit = resize picture frame - can't TOLERATE left/right scroll dammit Gumby! ]

[edit on 9-7-2005 by Misfit]

Except that above it in shadowed so you can't really tell if there's anything above it or not. It IS suspicious looking, but all you can say for sure is that there's nothing below it.

It's a shame that Howard apparently left, or stopped posting, right as I was redirecting him to my post. I wanted to see his input.

My thought is, just how much of that fuel would be left after that initial explosion? It's not like tank 1 exploded, but tank 2 only ruptured to coat the floors its with fuel.
Basically, a truely un-answerable question, but I have not seen it brought up, so I thought I would.
Misfit

Well, funnily enough Howard provided a link quoting NIST which actually states they DON'T believe the jet fuel was what brought the towers down, seems like they've realised thats a dead end so they are steaming home strong with the 'office supplies' did it - even when their own test turns an office to ash in 33 minutes and doesn't burn at a heat that could affect steel in that short of time.

They realized it was a "dead end" because the jet fuel obviously burned up on a few minutes after the impacts. It couldn't have been just the jet fuel knowing that, and that's why they're trying to tell you the office fires did it now. Of course that's just another big pile of bull chips.

Or it could be that SOME of the supports bent and warped, and other supports didn't, because the fire was unevenly spread, until you have a combination of 1 and 2.

The chances of that causing a clean, vertical fall are slim and none. The chance of either building falling cleanly vertically from anything save demolition is slim and none. It just doesn't happen.

A building will start falling in the direction of least resistance to gravity, and will continue falling in that same direction due to gravity (obviously; that's why they're falling in the first place: gravity). If a building in collapse changes in the way that it's falling, or especially if it falls vertically into material that is resisting the fall (or at least supposed to be! LMAO), some other force is acting besides gravity. You'll never hear of any other buildings falling straight down on themselves from structural damage; only the three on 9/11.