Fully-Involved Fire Does NOT Cause WTC Complex Building to Collapse

Here is the closest thing to a "fully involved" fire (something wrongly applied to WTC7) at the WTC complex on 9/11:










WTC5 was constructed of steel.

WTC5 used much smaller columns than the Towers and Building 7.

WTC5 used less steel in general, of course, than either the Towers or Building 7.

WTC5, relative to the Towers and Building 7, was not nearly as redundant (it was not as over-engineered; it was not as able to carry many more times its design load).

It burned longer than the towers, and probably longer than WTC7 since it was still burning when WTC7 collapsed.


This is one of the most damaged columns, photographed by a team overseen by FEMA and included in FEMA's report:




That is what happens when steel is heated over many hours with intense (FULLY INVOLVED) fire! It warps! It warps, twists, sags, bends, gets stringy and increasingly malleable as the heat applied to it causes its temperature to rise over time.

WTC1 and WTC7 both started falling symmetrically, as if all the columns holding them up failed simultaneously. How does that happen? The same happened to WTC2, too, after it lost its initial tilt, that was more than likely the result of the reinforced floors directly below from where its destruction began.


Real damage from fire causes collapses only locally and over much longer periods of time. Fire also does not cause runaway collapses, and this is from every single scientific study ever done on this, including the NIST study! The NIST team failed to cause WTC truss failures from fire in the given amount of time in their labs, and computer simulations, even after admitting that they cranked up the parameters.


The University of Edinburgh compiled information gathered on test fires on steel structures conducted in Cardington, UK since the 1980's. Yes, steel structures were exposed to intense fires in tests for research purposes since the 1980s, and guess what they found?:

Steel beams in standard fire tests reach a state of deflections and runaway well below temperatures achieved in real fires. In a composite steel frame structure these beams are designed to support the composite deck slab. It is therefore quite understandable that they are fire protected to avoid runaway failures. The fire at Broadgate showed that this didn't actually happen in a real structure. Subsequently, six full-scale fire tests on a real composite frame structure at Cardington showed that despite large deflections of structural members affected by fire, runaway type failures did not occur in real frame structures when subjected to realistic fires in a variety of compartments.

This project was the first major effort to understand this behaviour using computational models of the Cardington fire tests. A full explanation of the mechanics that are responsible for the robust behaviour of unprotected composite frames in fire has been achieved and will be presented in detail in this report. Reaching this new understanding has been a laborious process, and numerous blind alleys had to be investigated along the way, however obvious the answer may now seem to the researchers involved in this project. It is possible that the conclusions will not seem obvious to others who have not been directly involved, however considerable effort has gone in to presenting the results of the project to provide as much detail as possible. Approximately 40 supplementary reports and over 10 technical papers have been written and appear as an appendix to this report. This amount of work has ensured that the conclusions presented have been verified by a number of independent approaches. Mutually reinforcing arguments were developed from the results of different computational models, application of fundamental mechanics and the analysis of test data. It is therefore with a great deal of confidence that these findings have been presented for close scrutiny by the profession. Once this new understanding of structural behaviour in fire is widely disseminated, discussed and understood, the way will be clear for completing all the other tasks which are necessary for full exploitation of the knowledge gained. This will lead to safer, more economic and rational design of steel frame structures for fire resistance.

guardian.150m.com...

Why did WTC5 suffer only local collapses? It was WEAKER! By ALL means it was weaker, and obviously the fires were much worse for this building.


The debris that impacted it from the collapses did much more damage than a REAL fully-involved fire did!:

(Click for a larger image.)


When has a fire caused a runaway collapse in any steel building? When has fire caused anything BUT localized failures in steel buildings? Never! And don't say WTC1, 2, and 7, either, because all real science done by NIST so far has shown the exact opposite: those trusses will not fail under 2 hours of intense fire. They did this in their labs even with unfireproofed steel!


Think about it guys. Symmetrical, simultaneous column failures in massive skyscrapers? That doesn't happen because of just fire. It will NEVER happen because of fire alone. Fire takes too much time and is too chaotic to cause simultaneous column failures, and symmetrical collapses.

Nice illustration of a steel column buckling in a fire.


And that was in a 9 story building.

Let's see if we can figure out the difference between 5 and 7.

Building 5.

en.wikipedia.org...

WTC 5 was a steel-framed office building, with 9 stories. The structure was "L"-shaped and occupied the northeast corner of the WTC site. Overall dimensions were 330 by 420 ft (100 by 130 m), with an average area of 120,000 square feet (11,000 m²) per floor.

Building 7.

en.wikipedia.org...

The original structure had 47 floors[2] and was 570 feet (174 m) [2] tall. Each floor had 47,000 square feet (4,366 m²) of rentable office space, which made the building's floor plans considerably larger than most other office buildings in the city.[3] In all, 7 World Trade Center had 1,868,000 square feet (174,000 m²) of office space.

Building 5 only supported nine stories over a mucha larger "footprint" allowing for much less weight to be distributed over a greater area.

Buiding 7 had 47 floors to support on a much smaller footprint.

I don't think building five really has any relevance to seven, other than showing that office fire can cause columns to buckle.

And if columns buckled under the much lighter load in 5, it's pretty easy to imagine what happened once the columns in 7 started buckling with almost five times the floors.

Let's look at this picture to put it in perspective.



Notice that the smoke from 7 and 5 are flowing south. Notice that all of your pictures of fire are on the north side of the building.

Are you claiming that something other than fire is causing the immense amount of smoke from building 7?

/f3tvd

/zg4un

I'm ignoring everything that was off-topic and used fallacious logic, to focus on what would have been a logical problem if you didn't have your info mixed up.

Notice I included this:

WTC5, relative to the Towers and Building 7, was not nearly as redundant (it was not as over-engineered; it was not as able to carry many more times its design load).

If I have to support 50 tons, I might build a structure to support 150 tons. This is called redundancy; it's a safety feature. (And that would be a safety factor of 3, btw.)

The columns in the Twin Towers and WTC7 were designed to hold a proportion of the total load of the building comparable to the columns in WTC5. That's to say a column in WTC1 that held x weight might have been able to carry a max of 3x without failure (perimeter columns actually reported at a FoS of 5). In WTC5, though, it would've been more like 2x because the structure was more conventional and would not have had the same safety concerns. At the same time, the same size columns are not going to be used in both buildings to actually hold the same load.

In other words, you aren't going to use the same skinny columns in WTC7 as they did in WTC5.

This is a column from WTC7:




Big difference. (Sorry for the quality -- pics of WTC7's construction are hard to come by.)


Long story short, your assertion that WTC7 had to carry more load and was therefore more unstable is total bullcrap.

Buildings aren't all built with the same size columns, but expected to carry different loads.

[edit on 4-3-2007 by bsbray11]

I see.

So you agree that building Seven had a much larger load, and that is why they used larger steel trusses.

However a failure of columns on floor 8 of WTC 5, would probably cause a local roof failure, such as the kind seen in pictures of 5 from overhead.

A failure on floor 8 of WTC 7 and now you have 41 floors above it pressing down on a weakened structure.

I thought the differences were obvious.


Or if you think the above is "fallacious logic" perhaps you can explain why, instead of dismissing it.



[edit on 4-3-2007 by LeftBehind]

Local roof failure? No roof on WTC7 was local to where you are telling me the damage was. What you're describing would have been the failure of some main column, dropping it straight down onto itself. That's not warping from fire. That's being cut by (an) explosive(s). Fire will not cause a vertical column to drop straight down upon itself.


Also, the columns lower on the buildings are designed for ALL of the loads they are carrying (on ALL of the floors above them) -- and then some (the safety factor).

Just like they don't use small columns to support huge buildings, they don't use smaller columns at their bases, either. Just the opposite. And that's that much more steel to be heated to some extreme temperature, etc., before it can even begin to warp.

Originally posted by bsbray11
That's being cut by (an) explosive(s). Fire will not cause a vertical column to drop straight down upon itself.

I see. Perhaps you missed this photo, that you posted, showing a vertical column buckiling into itself?



Are you telling us that explosives did the damage in the above photo?

Also, the columns lower on the buildings are designed for ALL of the loads they are carrying (on ALL of the floors above them) -- and then some (the safety factor).

True.

However one thing that the lower columns were not designed for, is having the burning ruins of a 110 story building crash into it's side and then burn uncontrolled, and unfought for hours.



So, now that you have presented your case, perhaps you can outline your alternative theory for the collapse of 7.

Please show us your positive evidence for the existence of explosives at 7, or even the use of them.

Please explain why explosives are the most likely culprit.

Nice Post BSBray
Curious how the debunkers claim that WTC 7 was engulfed in flames but they still cant produce any pictures that resemble anything close to what we see in WTC 5.
How is it that we have pictures of WTC 5 in flames, FDNY on the scene applying water, but we have no such pictures of WTC 7?
Why was WTC 5 worth trying to save but WTC 7, a much larger, better built, more expensive building was determined to be unworthy of even an attempt.
From what the debunkers have to say, Mr. Silverstien, who was appointed honorary FDNY Chief for the day, decided to 'pull' the firemen from WTC 7, evidently so they could concentrate on the obviously gutted WTC 5?

Obviously I missed it because I'm the one that posted it. It didn't fall straight down upon itself. It buckled in one place. WTC7 didn't collapse by one of its columns buckling in one place.


But look at this! This is the point you're missing: that column you posted a picture of is MUCH SMALLER than the support columns in WTC7. It warped as a result of MUCH MORE INTENSE FIRE over a LONGER PERIOD OF TIME in WTC5!

WTC7's columns should NOT have been THAT damaged by fire, given that they were bigger, the fire was less involved, and for a smaller amount of time. What you're suggesting should not have ever happened! That's the whole point of this thread.

I've already come back around and had to re-iterate the original post, after only this many replies, as if you had totally missed it. You know, I really don't think you read over and thought about the original post at all.

However one thing that the lower columns were not designed for, is having the burning ruins of a 110 story building crash into it's side and then burn uncontrolled, and unfought for hours.

Actually, that's exactly the kind of unpredictable disaster that safety factors are including for in the first place.

And you can't tell me that WTC7 fell because debris hit it. That's a load of bullcrap and you know it, because it didn't fall when WTC1 did!

It has to come back to the fires, and this is why I posted this thread. Take WTC5 as a realistic example that reflects every single scientific experiment on the subjcet to date.

So, now that you have presented your case, perhaps you can outline your alternative theory for the collapse of 7.

Please show us your positive evidence for the existence of explosives at 7, or even the use of them.

Please explain why explosives are the most likely culprit.

I wouldn't have to if you'd learn how to stay on topic for more than 2 posts without showing me how little you know about any given subject.

For myself, the debate is over.

Shakespeare wrote "What is past is prologue." -

9/11 is prologue for the New Century; The Age of the New World Order - one world Government - where Terror and Despotism will reign supreme over the entire planet.

[edit on 4-3-2007 by Smack]

IF we let them....

WTC was a CD, there is NO point arguing that, the evidence is overwhelming, those thinking that some debris a fire brought down a big building are simply being played like a cheap piano by the NWO or simply believe that U.S. engenieers are stupid and ANY building on fire WILL COLAPSE, because steels melts so easily

Originally posted by LeftBehind
Nice illustration of a steel column buckling in a fire.


And that was in a 9 story building.

Let's see if we can figure out the difference between 5 and 7.

Building 5.

en.wikipedia.org...

WTC 5 was a steel-framed office building, with 9 stories. The structure was "L"-shaped and occupied the northeast corner of the WTC site. Overall dimensions were 330 by 420 ft (100 by 130 m), with an average area of 120,000 square feet (11,000 m²) per floor.

Building 7.

en.wikipedia.org...

The original structure had 47 floors[2] and was 570 feet (174 m) [2] tall. Each floor had 47,000 square feet (4,366 m²) of rentable office space, which made the building's floor plans considerably larger than most other office buildings in the city.[3] In all, 7 World Trade Center had 1,868,000 square feet (174,000 m²) of office space.

Building 5 only supported nine stories over a mucha larger "footprint" allowing for much less weight to be distributed over a greater area.

Buiding 7 had 47 floors to support on a much smaller footprint.

I don't think building five really has any relevance to seven, other than showing that office fire can cause columns to buckle.

And if columns buckled under the much lighter load in 5, it's pretty easy to imagine what happened once the columns in 7 started buckling with almost five times the floors.

Let's look at this picture to put it in perspective.

Notice that the smoke from 7 and 5 are flowing south. Notice that all of your pictures of fire are on the north side of the building.

Are you claiming that something other than fire is causing the immense amount of smoke from building 7?

/f3tvd

/zg4un

Why do you keep showing that pictures? The smoke is from the two collapsed twin towers not from WTC7.

Originally posted by LeftBehind
Building 5 only supported nine stories over a mucha larger "footprint" allowing for much less weight to be distributed over a greater area.

Buiding 7 had 47 floors to support on a much smaller footprint.

This doesn't make a difference. Ultimate shear, stress, strength in design would be relative to the floors and such. Meaning that beams, columns, composite flooring etc. would be designed for the ultimate allowable shear, stress, strength ect. It doesn't change with the weight, size of the steel etc. What governs design is the allowable shear, stress, bending, buckling ect.

To further illustrate, say the design allowable strength is 50. A smaller building with less weight would have smaller steel members because the weight would produce smaller stresses. Now, say a larger building has an allowable strength of 50. The more weight will produce more stress, so you need to have bigger members to deal with that stress. But the bottom line is that the allowable strengths, stresses, bending moment etc. would be the same for both buildings (from some code like the BOCA). So, therefore, having the same allowable and ultimate strength would produce the same situation relatively.

Am I making any sense? If I'm wrong in those assumptions, please let me know before April 20th because I'd hate to go to my PE exam thinking wrong engineering principles.

I don't think building five really has any relevance to seven, other than showing that office fire can cause columns to buckle.

It has everything to do with 7. See above.

And if columns buckled under the much lighter load in 5, it's pretty easy to imagine what happened once the columns in 7 started buckling with almost five times the floors.

You're forgetting that the ultimate strength of both buildings would be the same relatively. It doesn't matter if there were 500 floors above 7. The design allowable loads, stresses, buckling etc. governs.

Yeah Griff but....but....but 7 was a bigger building!

Im sorry, its not really funny, the shape we're in as a country.

What about my questions from above? Are they that bad of questions?
Doesnt anybody else think it strange that there are pictures of FDNY on the scene at WTC5 applying water, but they avoided WTC7 like the plague?
Was this because of Silverstein telling them to 'pull'?
Who put him in charge of the FDNY anyway?

Originally posted by LeftBehind
However one thing that the lower columns were not designed for, is having the burning ruins of a 110 story building crash into it's side and then burn uncontrolled, and unfought for hours.

Unless the damage was to the lower columns themselves...i.e. severed, it makes no difference. It would actually lessen the load because those parts of the building aren't there anymore. I get sick of this damage from WTC 1 crap. It would have made the loads on the columns less...not more.

So, now that you have presented your case, perhaps you can outline your alternative theory for the collapse of 7.

I also get sick of people wanting an exact scenario when we don't have the needed knowledge of new technologies that could have been used. I don't care what they used....they used something.

Please show us your positive evidence for the existence of explosives at 7, or even the use of them.

Here we go again.



[edit on 3/7/2007 by Griff]

Look at the image of WTC7 fires

This look totally photoshopped and that those little fires could have brought down WTC7 in his own footprint is totally ridiculous.

If you would just a LITTLE thing about controlled demolition, is that to brought a building in his own footprint needs real good preparations by experts, and all charges must go at the SAME TIME or it doesn't work.

So give me a break that a fire could have done that when professional teams miss their shot once and awhile like it did in Texas 2 weeks ago.

[edit on 7-3-2007 by Vitchilo]

Originally posted by 11Bravo
What about my questions from above? Are they that bad of questions?
Doesnt anybody else think it strange that there are pictures of FDNY on the scene at WTC5 applying water, but they avoided WTC7 like the plague?
Was this because of Silverstein telling them to 'pull'?
Who put him in charge of the FDNY anyway?

Very good questions. Also, I thought the water main broke? How could they be fighting the fire in 5 when the main broke? And, look at the difference in the fire. Why would they let 7 burn with pockets of fire (at least in the begining when the fighters were "pulled") and try to fight an engulfed building? Doesn't make sense to "pull" them from 7 and not 5 and 6 also. Because if they felt 7 was comming down, they sure as hell should have thought 5 and 6 were coming down also.

Unless you wanted them away from 7 for some "other" reason.

Good research and strong points as always, bsbray11 - kudos!

Nothing to add here.

Originally posted by Griff
Very good questions. Also, I thought the water main broke? How could they be fighting the fire in 5 when the main broke?

ROFL

That is a good question. WTC7 was right across the street. The guy could've just did a 180 and been spraying WTC7 just like that.


HMM!

Guess the official explanation there is he had a crick in his back and couldn't turn around.

A little information form Silverstien himself on WTC 7.

''We built in enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors,'' said Larry Silverstein, president of the company. ''Sure enough, Salomon had that need.

[edit on 7-3-2007 by ULTIMA1]

bsbray11

Excellent, excellent post. There really is nothing anyone can say to logically refute this.

The increase in redundancy in larger buildings is enough to seal the argument, and not only that the fact that in order for building 7 to collapse the way it did, it would mean all of the steel would buckle all at the same time which is really impossible to believe.

The taller the building, the much much more it is over designed for events such as uncontrolled fire and even damage.