DEBUNKERS! Please respond to the following debunking of the NIST report!

Originally posted by Slap Nuts
Thanks, but your core assumption that if ONE FLOOR were to collapse that all would collapse, straight down is FLAWED. It is NOT only on floor offering RESISTANE... It is 1000 FEET of BOX STEEL COLUMS anchored in BEDROCK.

The math you offer is moot as you assume that if one floor is removed that there will be some sort of "terminal energy" that the structure could not arrest. This assumption is not supported by the design of the building.

Why is it moot? My core assumption is that multiple floors collapsed, not entirely straight down but in enough quantity downward to cause the structurally intact floor immediately below them to fail, with same thing happening to each successive structurally intact floor due to the added mass from each collapsed floor. The

Surely there must be a limit to the weight a single floor can hold until it fails, don't you agree?

If you want the NIST Reports debunked, all you have to do is realize that there is really nothing in them to be debunked in the first place.


1) They only try to analyze the first floor to fail in either building, describing the ensuing collapses (the REAL oddities) as "inevitable", etc.


2) The buckling they show, a handful of columns on each floor if that, would not compromise anywhere NEAR enough of the structure to cause any collapse to begin with, even by their own figures for safety ratings.

Any floor could handle more than twice its design loads and yet buckling a handful of columns on a floor somehow does more damage to its structure than if over half of them 100% failed.


Again, maybe you guys will be getting somewhere when you finally get around to modeling the collapse of the second, or, *GASP* third floors in each building. That's where the "pancake" stuff would have to start facing facts, literally, for the modeling to hold up. Unless they did a lot more "tweaking". But that would be a lot of tweaking. :-/

[edit on 13-7-2006 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
Any floor could handle more than twice its design loads and yet buckling a handful of columns on a floor somehow does more damage to its structure than if over half of them 100% failed.

So what exactly was the design load of a WTC floor? I asked this earlier and would like to know.

I still contend that once the floors started collapsing due to the combo of impact, explosion and fires, there was too much load on each successive floor to handle and they each failed in turn.

Originally posted by pavil
So what exactly was the design load of a WTC floor? I asked this earlier and would like to know.

The load rating for columns in the perimeter area was 50 psf. The load rating for the core area was up to 100 psf. This comes out to be an estimated 75 psf average for an office floor. The load ratings for floors 110-94 average out to be about 82 psf (3.9 kPa) per floor. On average, a floor's design live load was 1,488 tons. The estimated total weight of a floor, dead load plus live load, is 3,306 tons. Add the factor of safety and the building structure could handle multiple times this load. It is estimated that the average factor of safety for a floor was 3.35. This means a floor could handle a total of 11,075 tons before failing. To visualize, imagine 5,500 2-ton cars stacked in a square about 1/3 of a city block.

Source.

I think this is based on a 200,000 ton WTC Tower. They're the most detailed figures I've seen.

I still contend that once the floors started collapsing due to the combo of impact, explosion and fires, there was too much load on each successive floor to handle and they each failed in turn.

Couple problems: Most people try to justify this theory by suggesting that the collapsing weight increased every time a floor was destroyed, because the destroyed floor's weight would be added on to the weight already collapsing. Two problems with this are that (a) most of the debris did NOT fall straight down onto lower floors, but fell outwards, off the sides of the buildings, and landed outside of the footprints, and (b) pulverized concrete and dissociated steel beams are easily deflected, so a smashed-up floor isn't going to be of much use in smashing up more floors.

With WTC1 you're also looking at 13 floors thoroughly destroying 97 more floors, all without slowing down in the process (even though much mass was being lost and the floors were becoming progressively stronger towards the base). So without trying to justify pancake collapse with the kind of faulty logic in the preceding paragraph, the whole thing is going to seem totally impossible without additional energy sources (ie explosives) aiding in the collapse.

BB,

In your opinion how many additional floors of weight could a single floor of the WTC support till it failed? Assume completely intact floors for th sake of this argument ie no loss of weight due to falling off edge, pulverization ect.



For example, would 3 total additional floors of weight on an existing structurally intact floor be enough for it to fail? Using the figures you gave above it would be 2.35 additional complete floors. If not what is your number.

[edit on 13-7-2006 by pavil]

Originally posted by pavil
BB,

In your opinion how many additional floors of weight could a single floor of the WTC support till it failed? Assume completely intact floors for th sake of this argument ie no loss of weight due to falling off edge, pulverization ect.



For example, would 3 total additional floors of weight on an existing structurally intact floor be enough for it to fail? Using the figures you gave above it would be 2.35 additional complete floors. If not what is your number.

[edit on 13-7-2006 by pavil]

"A Floor" is NOT supporting the weight of the floor above it. Very large and Very strong steel box colums were supporting the weight alnog with an outter lattice design supporting the rest.. these were anchored into bedrock. It is not a "toothpick" design or a house of cards.

As weight is being REMOVED from the box colums and from the lattice how are they being weakened?

Again I will ask, what is your opinion as to the maximum weight a single floor could withstand till it fails?

There has to be a point where it does fail once a system has been compromised. Either give me an estimate in weight or in floors. Simply stating that "Very large and Very strong steel box columns were supporting the weight along with an outer lattice design supporting the rest" is not an good enough answer.

Each segment of the building does not support the entire weight of the structure, together, when complete, they do. Obviously after the impact, the WTC was not a complete system. Each segment has a point where it will fail. Tell me what you think that point is for a floor of the WTC.

You seem to imply that a floor could have a load of 10 times it's average weight on it and since there is the rest of the building there, inner and outer supports, it would not fail. That is not the case is it?

Originally posted by Slap Nuts


"A Floor" is NOT supporting the weight of the floor above it. Very large and Very strong steel box colums were supporting the weight alnog with an outter lattice design supporting the rest.. these were anchored into bedrock. It is not a "toothpick" design or a house of cards.

As weight is being REMOVED from the box colums and from the lattice how are they being weakened?

Well I don't think so.
The weight was borne by the construction design SYSTEM. central core/perimeter columns BRACED by the floor trusses and spandrels. If one end of a brace fails, the whole bracing system for that floor is removed. Without bracing, the core and perimeter columns would have collapsed on their own even with no damage.

Without the bracing of the trusses/spandrels, it is absolutely a 'toothpick' design or a house of cards.

[edit on 13-7-2006 by Vushta]

Originally posted by Slap Nuts


"A Floor" is NOT supporting the weight of the floor above it.

Sorry but if higher floors come falling down on the lower floor it IS supporting their weight.

The whole argument is a bogus deflection. To try and make a case based on nothing but guessing is the beating heart of CTs. To say X is the rated load limits of each floor etc..is crap reasoning.
Once the collapse was started all that goes out the window. There were incrediblely complex forces acting and reacting with each other in exact ways that will never be fully known.
But this is what CTs thrive on, conclusions that can never be proven.
If someone points out that the weight of the floor falling on the next lower floor( not even counting the other forces at play) most likely failed the connections at either perimeter or core effectively eliminating the bracing system...the CT will say that there was not enough weight because the concrete was 'pulverized'. It doesn't matter. the weight doesn't just disappear because it changed form. Take a 50 lb. concrete block...'pulverize' it....it still weighs 50 lbs. So they say it was 'dispersed'. Well how much was dispersed?..how do you know that? etc.

This whole line of reasoning truely is moot.

If the idea is that this stuff proves a CD...then provide evidence of a demolition. There was no explosive residue..no blast patterns..no visible explosions..no failed explosive devices that were found..no one saw any explosions etc. But the CTs will say it because it was all hidden..again..with no evidence. The pattern is always the same. Ask them a direct question and they flee.

[edit on 13-7-2006 by Vushta]

FOR ANY ONE THAT REALLY WANTS TO CHECK OUT THE OTHERSIDE ( meaning no conspirital) please go to this site

www.geocities.com...
It answers alot of your questions.You will have to do alot of reading, it continues on numerous pages.Don't let it scare ya.Ya might learn somthen.

Peace,Love,and enderstanding.

Also, I've not seen a single person address the issues of impact and momentum.

These two things absolutely come into play. It's not enough to talk about the weight, you must consider the force of the collision of the floor with the one below it, along with the damage such impacts would have on things like the expansion joint clips that connect the trusses to the columns at one end and to the core at the the other.

These connections might possibly be designed to hold 5 times the weight of the portion of the floor they supported. IOW, you could line an entire floor with empty waterbeds, then hook hoses up and fill them all and not have a problem. But that is not the same as dropping that number of already filled waterbeds onto the floor from above, basically simultaneously.

Perhaps the floors were designed with safety factors large enough to hold a much, much larger amount of weight. The question is, were they designed with safety factors large enough to catch this amount of weight in motion?

Harte

Excellent point Harte. I hadn't thought of that.

Originally posted by pavil
In your opinion how many additional floors of weight could a single floor of the WTC support till it failed? Assume completely intact floors for th sake of this argument ie no loss of weight due to falling off edge, pulverization ect.

For example, would 3 total additional floors of weight on an existing structurally intact floor be enough for it to fail? Using the figures you gave above it would be 2.35 additional complete floors. If not what is your number.

If the structure held up the way you're thinking it did, the bottom floors would not have been able to hold the 100's of floors above them, would they? If it was a matter of two or three additional floors to get the towers to collapse, the towers could never have been built past floor 4 or 5.

The safety factor ratings indicate how many more times the columns could support the load they already carried, for everything above them. You'd be stacking very large sections of additional tower onto the buildings before the lower floors would fail, but the upper floors were not designed to carry higher floors and would fail much easier.

Think about it -- for the floors that were designed to carry the weight of all the floors above, you'd be stacking twice the floors above them to reach that 2.35 x more weight or whatever. Make sense?

If a whole floor could give out uniformly, and there was enough open space to allow accelerating to a decent speed, what you're suggesting would come into play. But even then, it wouldn't be "destroy these trusses and then total free-fall for 12 feet to regain momentum" or anything like that. It would be constant resistance from the perimeter grid and core structure.

It would take incredible amounts of energy to continue falling against such strong, constant resisting forces, and yet the WTC Towers fell without slowing the whole way down.

Originally posted by bsbray11
If the structure held up the way you're thinking it did, the bottom floors would not have been able to hold the 100's of floors above them, would they? If it was a matter of two or three additional floors to get the towers to collapse, the towers could never have been built past floor 4 or 5.

No.... the towers when completed and intact were quite able to support the load that was distributed and have a factor of extra safety built into it them. That is how they build towers, good floor upon good floor. However, if one floor were to suddenly weigh 3-6 times more than ever anticipated due to debris accumulating on it, what do you think happens to that floor and the support mechanisms on it?

Think about it -- for the floors that were designed to carry the weight of all the floors above, you'd be stacking twice the floors above them to reach that 2.35 x more weight or whatever. Make sense?

Not really, Each floor is designed to withstand it's own load with a hefty safety margin plus the overall support structure, outside and core, when completely or fairly intact, distributes the weight of the whole building rather well. In fact I would go as far as to say that if the WTC had not had a crash, explosion or fire, any of the floors would have been able to withstand the collapse of one to maybe 3 (really pushing the limits of the building) floors falling on an existing floor.

Once some of the outer and core supports are damaged or degraded, what happens to the remaining support systems? This is what happened on Sept. 11. The weight absorbed by the floors below the collapse were of a scale much more than anyone ever anticipated ever having to bear.

Why is it so suprising to you that the WTC's once compromised by a crash, explosion and fire, started a collapse by the impact zone and that an intact floor below, not designed to withstand that much stress, failed and fell down, adding even more weight onto the next floor and so on.

Originally posted by pavil
Not really, Each floor is designed to withstand it's own load with a hefty safety margin plus the overall support structure,

How does a floor's load not include all of the floors resting upon it?

How do you separate the "two"? Are you only including the floor directly above? Are you only including the material on the trusses? Because I don't think we're discussing the safety factors of the trusses.

Do you think the loads from all the floors above are totally disregarded when discussing a safety factor?

Again, if you took one of the middle floors, say floor 60, and stacked 50 more floors on top of it (the number of floors that DID rest on top of it), would it collapse?

It certainly would going by your logic, that a floor could only withstand its own weight plus the weight of a few more floors. Yet the Towers stood for decades. How, pavil?

This doesn't have as much to do with damaged columns as you would like, either. Knocking out >15% of the columns in a region is not going to compromise 100% of the structure. It's going to be PROPORTIONATE. And those safety factors would not have allowed simple >15% structural damage to compromise a whole section of building.

You're thinking very selectively about the structure, pavil, and I think you're having to go out of your way to do so.

Why is it so suprising to you that the WTC's once compromised by a crash, explosion and fire, started a collapse by the impact zone and that an intact floor below, not designed to withstand that much stress, failed and fell down, adding even more weight onto the next floor and so on.

First of all, I really wished you guys would get over the totally wrong assumption that the weight accumulated as each floor fell.

1) Most of the debris fell outside of the buildings, off to the sides, and landed outside of the footprints. Therefore most could not also have fallen straight down onto the floors below, so not even a majority could have done what you're suggesting.

It may strike you as some oddity as to how most of the material could land outside of the footprints when the buildings fell straight down upon themselves, but it doesn't me, and you can verify this yourself by looking at photos of Ground Zero and examining the spread of steel debris.

2) The destroyed floors became pretty thoroughly destroyed, with steel sections dissociated and concrete slabs completely pulverized. This kind of material wouldn't be very efficient at destroying even more floors, would it?


But, anyway, it would be "surprising" for you too if you weren't thinking as so illogically of the structures of the buildings.

[edit on 14-7-2006 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
Again, if you took one of the middle floors, say floor 60, and stacked 50 more floors on top of it (the number of floors that DID rest on top of it), would it collapse?

If you stack the 50 more floors on top of it with the complete or almost complete support system for those 50 floors as well, no it would not collapse.

If 10-15 of said floors had weakened and damaged or incomplete support systems then, quite probably, yes a collapse would occur.

It certainly would going by your logic, that a floor could only withstand its own weight plus the weight of a few more floors. Yet the Towers stood for decades. How, pavil?

I don't think you are following me. To use your analogy, would a floor, which is designed to certain tolerances be able to support those additional floors, if those additional floors had no supports of their own? The whole building is predicated on each part doing it's share. Without those floors contributing to the support of the building, once those safety limits are exceeded, what happens?

1) Most of the debris fell outside of the buildings, off to the sides, and landed outside of the footprints. Therefore most could not also have fallen straight down onto the floors below, so not even a majority could have done what you're suggesting.

In your estimation, what is the percentage of debris that fell down as opposed to outside the footprint? The building did not fall straight down entirely, I don't think anyone is saying that as good chunks smashed into surrounding buildings. We seem to disagree on the amount of weight that was falling directly onto the footprints of the WTC. I contend that if even 40% percent fell on the footprint, that would be enough to break the camel's back so to speak. I think intially the amount was a greater percentage.

40% of WTC1 above impact 13 floors = 5.2 floors falling in footprint.
40% of WTC2 above impact 30 floors = 12 floors falling in footprint.

To me that is enough to start the events in motion. To you, it is not.
Obviously we disagree. Such is the debate.

Can you honestly tell me that if a floor went from a normal load and could withstand up to 3 times that normal load as a safety factor, that it could support over 6 times the normal load and not fail?

I know, I know the 1st floor of the WTC was supporting the whole load of the building, entirely itself.

Originally posted by pavil
To use your analogy, would a floor, which is designed to certain tolerances be able to support those additional floors, if those additional floors had no supports of their own?

What floors had no supports?

Again, this is not all or nothing. Failures would all be proportionate. Why do you think we're discussing safety factors to begin with, pavil? Because of the gray area between all and nothing.

Unless several floors were severely gutted, you would not have this problem. No floors were so severely gutted that this should have ever been a problem. That's the basis of our whole discussion. (Or at least it should be: anything else is not only hypothetical but completely irrelevant.)

40% of WTC1 above impact 13 floors = 5.2 floors falling in footprint.
40% of WTC2 above impact 30 floors = 12 floors falling in footprint.

To me that is enough to start the events in motion. To you, it is not.
Obviously we disagree. Such is the debate.

What you need to find is the impacting force from those floors and compare it to how much stored energy would be available for resistance in the lower floors and everything that comprised them. I think the most critical unit you're looking for is impulse here. From my experience so far, without the construction drawings, it's an impossible figure to find. With the construction drawings, it would still be long and complex but would finally make or break the official story.

We can debate static things with more math, but once things got into motion, it becomes an intuitive kind of thing, like 13 crushing 97 or etc., unless the construction drawings are ever released by NIST. Wouldn't that benefit everyone involved here, if NIST released those? Maybe we should all pitch in to get that rolling.

Can you honestly tell me that if a floor went from a normal load and could withstand up to 3 times that normal load as a safety factor, that it could support over 6 times the normal load and not fail?

I think that if the upper floors got a good, clean-air drop (which could not and would not have happened), and were allowed to gain momentum during this brief period, several floors would be destroyed before the mass would come to rest.

Each floor would cost a great deal of energy to destroy. You realize this, right? This energy is exerted by the upper floors and can NEVER be regained.

And again, the collapse did not consist of tackling the floors one-by-one, with 12 feet of space in between. Thick, solid steel columns all the way down, both the core structure and perimeter grid, and the trusses (floors) only increased the already-present resistance when they were reached.

This couldn't go on forever, and dissociated steel beams and concrete dust only add so much to your falling mass. Do you really think it would add enough to make up for how much energy would've been exerted for every inch of building further destroyed by the falling mass?

I'd also like to point out again that the collapses did not slow the whole way down. They began falling at a pace and stayed there the whole way down, despite the large losses of mass and the fact that the lower floors were much stronger. Falling mass decreases, strength of floors increases, and yet the collapse velocity remained the same.

Originally posted by pavil
So what exactly was the design load of a WTC floor? I asked this earlier and would like to know.

The core was designed to hold a load. The exterior lattice was designed to hold a load. The individual floors were just supporting trusses, pans and concrete attached to these GIANT pillars of strength. Again, your assuming that the building was like a stack of boxes. It was not. To collapse a "floor" you also have to sollapse the core in that area. The core supportability is not determined on a per floor basis and it is unrealistic that all or many of these box colums failed symmetrically and simultaneously on a floor producing the result you and the nist wat... the "failure of a floor".