Purdue Creates Scientific Animation of 9/11

Something interesting that I caught on the wire. Take a look.



This a Purdue University computer simulation of the first plane going into the north tower. Details of the making of this incredible simulation can be found here.

All in all, this is a terrific and well done simulation. Now before you say that you've seen other computer simulations of the 911 attacks, please note how much time and effort went into this:

"To estimate the serious damage to the World Trade Center core columns, we assembled a detailed numerical model of the impacting aircraft as well as a detailed numerical model of the top 20 stories of the building," Sozen says. "We then used weeks of supercomputer time over a number of years to simulate the event in many credible angles of impact of the aircraft."

So while other animations made by news outlets were done on the fly to give a quick visual aid, the Prudue animation is based off of thier own findings to give the most accurate look of what happens when a plane rams into a building. It's like compairing a sketch versus a complete painting.

So what did Purdue find? Well, it wasn't the force of the plane that done North Tower in. It was the gas. The kinetic energy of the gas (or any liquid for that matter.) caused the plane to hit alot harder than if it was out of gas. The impact was like a bullet, ripping out fireproof insulation, support beams and anything else in it's wake.

All in all, a terrific piece of animation. What do you think, sirs?

This is a very interesting animation. Thanks for posting it. My first thought when I'm presented with computer simulations is the old computer caveat "garbage in garbage out". Having said that, it appears as if much more was put into this animation than has been the case up to now. Only an expert could tell you if what was put into the database for the animation was garbage or not.

The simulation appears to show the thin aluminum skin of the airplane taking out core columns and does not seem to account for any alteration in trajectory of the incoming fuselage following the explosion of the fuel. Here is a quote from the article linked to in the original post.

"The aircraft moved through the building as if it were a hot and fast lava flow," Sozen says. "Consequently, much of the fireproofing insulation was ripped off the structure. Even if all of the columns and girders had survived the impact - an unlikely event - the structure would fail as the result of a buckling of the columns. The heat from an ordinary office fire would suffice to soften and weaken the unprotected steel. Evaluation of the effects of the fire on the core column structure, with the insulation removed by the impact, showed that collapse would follow whatever the number of columns cut at the time of the impact."

Pardon me but a lot of this territory has been covered already. A good portion of this statement sounds like baloney to me. For example:

"Evaluation of the effects of the fire on the core column structure, with the insulation removed by the impact, showed that collapse would follow whatever the number of columns cut at the time of the impact."

That is just arrant nonsense! Also an "ordinary office fire" would soften the unprotected steel. Are we dealing here with a gussied up rehash of the same old discredited authorized explanations?

Originally posted by Cowboy Clint
What do you think, sirs?

Pretty neat. Now someone should model the fires against all the steel columns like this, and see what they can come up with.

I didn't look at any of the parameters but one potential problem that could render the whole thing "garbage" as the last poster put it, would be if FEMA and NIST lied about the structure of the building, which wouldn't surprise me considering all of the conflicting information before the FEMA report, the fact that the original structural documents were locked up immediately after 9/11 and have been ever since, and the architectural documents released recently on the Internet could have been fabricated for all I know, it was so long after the event and "released" from such mysterious sources as it was ("leaked").

ips are you then suggesting that fireproofing is pointless since an office fire cannot weaken steel? Why would they use it?

Originally posted by snoopy
ips are you then suggesting that fireproofing is pointless since an office fire cannot weaken steel? Why would they use it?

It was common practice to use it before the effects of office fires upon steel was properly understood. It wasn't until 2000 that the University of Edinburgh compiled years of research from the tests carried out for over a decade at Cardington in the UK.

You can find their findings here: www.studyof911.com...


An excerpt:

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.

Pretty straightforward, right? They go on to say that about 40 supplementary reports and 10 technical papers support their conclusions and were included for reference. This was of course before 9/11.

Originally posted by ipsedixit


Pardon me but a lot of this territory has been covered already. A good portion of this statement sounds like baloney to me. For example:

"Evaluation of the effects of the fire on the core column structure, with the insulation removed by the impact, showed that collapse would follow whatever the number of columns cut at the time of the impact."

yes, perhaps this 'territory' might have been covered before...
but the previous opinions voiced were based on intellectual deduction
And Not on a computer model devised by a group of thinkers at PUrdue
(who must have set a extremely high standard for the computer model numbers/criteria to 'crunch' on rare/expensive super-computer time..)

i reckon they assume 100% of all foam insulation was blown off the columns by the inertia of the aircraft crashing into the building at +400 knots & sliding 50 ft. to the outer perimeter of the interior core-columns.
Which isn't too hard to conclude

Even if ALL the fire-proofi-ng was 'knocked off' on ALL the impacted floors, the towers would still not have collapsed the way they did.

In fact I would go as far as to say that if there wasn't ANY fire-proofing the towers would still not have collapsed the way they did. If 10 planes had impacted the towers, they still would not have globally collapsed to their foundations turning concrete etc into dust.

Go ask a non-biased expert this, if you can find one that hasn't been biased by all the BS that is, or just scared for their job.

That's what the de-bunkers need to realise, you're so called evidence for natural pancake collapse is not evidence of a natural pancake collapse at all.
There is a lot of things needs clearing up to convince me it was a natural collapse, but whenever I set it up for you to prove your natural collapse you all ignore or dance around the questions. 'WTC2 tilt and rotation', still haven't got a reasonable explanation for this from the de-bunkers. That's why I keep asking this in 9-11 threads. If you can't answer this physics problem then all your other 'evidence' is mute, a waste of every bodies time.
Of course this question will once again be ignored using the common excuse, it's off topic. But to keep this thread from straying too far you can answer my questions in this thread...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I won't be holding my breath...

Anok,

If I may ask you a question or two.

Do you know what NIST says is the cause of the collapse?

Why are you saying Natural Pancake? The pancake collapse was not what the NIST report states.

As far as the tilting and rotating, I believe this has been explained in detail from several engineers that were not affiliated with NIST or any other government agencies.

I am not sure if NIST covered it.

Not to be cocky, but what are your credentials to say that if the tower was without fireproofing... etc?

I don't consider myself a "debunker" but i am a skeptic.

CaptainObvious,

Read my last post above, it has an extensive study that shows the effects of unfireproofed structural steel in an office fire. Read what it concludes about the ultimate effects from such damages.

And can I ask what, in your opinion, the NIST team asserts in regards to the global collapse mechanism, in place of a "pancaking"?

Originally posted by bsbray11
[
It was common practice to use it before the effects of office fires upon steel was properly understood. It wasn't until 2000 that the University of Edinburgh compiled years of research from the tests carried out for over a decade at Cardington in the UK.

You can find their findings here: www.studyof911.com...


Pretty straightforward, right? They go on to say that about 40 supplementary reports and 10 technical papers support their conclusions and were included for reference. This was of course before 9/11.

Unfortunately that's based on a completely different design structure. And now we have many peer reviewed papers showing the opposite for the WTC design. And we have testing which shows the steel used in the WTC at office fire temperatures will weaken.

Bsbray,

The challange that was presented to ATS members was from ANOK, the questions I had were for him. But, I will address you. (or at least attempt to) I am working on another thread I hope to post this evening so admitedly I didnt read the entire study. Were these tests done under the similar cirumstances as that of WTC 1 & 2 ? (weight, damaged support columns, things of that nature) OR was it..lets fire up this stuff and see what happens!

See, these tests are all fine in regards to what effect fireproofing may have on the structure of a building, there would be no way to take into consideration the circumstances surrounding the attacks. Steel does in FACT weaken from heat. Steel structures have fallen from fire alone. (no not any skyscrapers and no I doubt the thickness of that of the WTC.)

The researchers are analyzing how many columns were destroyed initially in the building's core, a spine of 47 heavy steel I-beams extending through the center of the structure, Sozen said.

"Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," he said. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."

I found this to be a very interesting piece of animation. it gives alot of insight to the damage that was actually caused that day to the WTC.

Originally posted by snoopy
Unfortunately that's based on a completely different design structure.

I don't think you know what you're talking about, snoop. The tests were done and data gathered from isolated steel members, ie beams and columns. The global arrangement does not affect this data.

Steel is steel.

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
Were these tests done under the similar cirumstances as that of WTC 1 & 2 ? (weight, damaged support columns, things of that nature) OR was it..lets fire up this stuff and see what happens!

What variables do you think played a role in the towers that would affect the rate at which steel loses strength as it is heated? I don't think there were ANY.

There was damage to the towers from the impacts, but it did not cause collapse. Therefore the collapses are blamed on a combination of fire and impact damages, with the understanding that it was the fire that actually caused the specific collapse mechanism and actually caused the buildings to begin falling. In fact, with a conservative generalized factor of safety of just 2, over half of a floor's worth of columns would have to be severed to initiate a failure, whereas the impacts caused less than 15% columns severed and even less partially damaged (FEMA 2.2.1.1, 2.2.2.2, NIST's core modeling), which represents partial loss of load-bearing capabilities.

The tests at Cardington were carried out to see how steel structures behave when fires begin to heat them to significant temperatures, ie temperatures that produce warping, buckling, etc.

The data was gathered on isolated steel members, the columns and beams, and handled in this way. So what they did was like "zooming in" on a steel structure's components, the steel itself, and seeing how it behaved in these conditions. The global arrangement of these columns and beams really did not play a major role. There was a difference in deflection of columns that were braced vs. columns that were not braced, but that's about as close as you can get to calling foul on no comparison: the comparison is obvious and direct.

Also, the core structure apparently had plenty of bracing, and according to the study, this represents significantly more heating to deflect as much as a non-braced column:




But that's going off-topic, because the point I want to make absolutely clear is that you can't call foul on this study just because the test structure was not the same as the towers' structures: the test structure itself was not what they were studying!

[edit on 14-6-2007 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
Why are you saying Natural Pancake? The pancake collapse was not what the NIST report states.
As far as the tilting and rotating, I believe this has been explained in detail from several engineers that were not affiliated with NIST or any other government agencies.
I am not sure if NIST covered it.
Not to be cocky, but what are your credentials to say that if the tower was without fireproofing... etc?

Natural collapse: as opposed to purposeful collapse using some kind of explosive.

You're not sure if NIST covered it? Maybe you should check that out?
Kinda the point of my questioning really. The people who are supporting the official story (the de-bunkers) better know the official story well, otherwise they are just blindly supporting, and wasting peoples time arguing something when they don't even know the argument. This kind of blind support is why people like hitler (and bush) get power.

Point to the article that explains the rotation and twisting of WTC2 if there is one. I've been asking for this now for a while and have yet to see anything anywhere in the official reports that fully explains how the towers defied physics. That's all I'm asking, where is the answer you all keep saying is out there?

Just common sense and a knowledge of metal working tells me office fires don't get hot enough to cause construction steel to globally fail. Go take a class on forging. But that's not the end of the story, the de-bunkers seem to fail miserably in putting the whole story together.
I'll say again even if there was massive fires engulfing the whole building, and there was no fireproofing (mute point really) it would still not have collapsed the way it did, globally with no resistance from undamaged structure and massive expulsion of it's facade etc...
The rotation and twisting of the top of WTC 2 is all you need to look at really to see this collapse had 'help'. I'm not gonna explain it all over again because you should do that research yourself before you even say the official story is right. But as I keep proving over and over, the de-bunkers have no answer for the south tower physics problem. Which obviously tells me they either haven't done the research, or they are lying.

When I ask people this question, which I have been doing for awhile now, I get either ignored, or just excuses that don't explain anything.
I am not asking cause I don't know, I'm asking because I know the de-bunkers can't answer the question, because it's not in the official reports, and they have done no research of their own (or even read the official reports in some cases). So they have no idea how to answer it. Doesn't that tell you something? It should...

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by snoopy
Unfortunately that's based on a completely different design structure.

I don't think you know what you're talking about, snoop. The tests were done and data gathered from isolated steel members, ie beams and columns. The global arrangement does not affect this data.

Steel is steel.

Are you sure you read the thing? Steel is not steel. If only it were that simple.

Originally posted by snoopy
Steel is not steel.

You're going to have to explain this one to me.

And then explain how the study doesn't apply, when it revolves around individual steel members, not any particular configuration of them.

Within moments, this will be "debunked" as mis-info to "distract" us from the "truth". At any rate, this is an excellent, logical, and correct way to show that two planes did in fact hit the towers, and did in fact cause terminal damage to the structure. It is a sad day when common sense and higher thought take a backseat to the bandwagon effect.



Please see my signature below.

Steven Jones addressed the issue of computer modelling of the WTC collapse in an interview . (Unfortunately I don't have the link, but many may have seen this.) He said that proponents of the official version at one of the labs trying to bolster that version were having difficulty creating a computer model that fit the observed results of the collapse while firmly leaving out the effects of explosives.

They had to keep massaging the data to the point of extremely exaggerated parameters in order to approach the point where the collapse could appear plausible while at the same time excluding explosives. I think even with the exaggerated parameters (garbage in) they were not able to achieve the desired simulated collapse (garbage out).

When you read the accompanying explanation very carefully, one gets the impression that the people at Purdue have hit on a new parameter (the large mass of liquid fuel AS PROJECTILE) to create a model they can work with reasonably (i.e. rationally) in the context of the observed collapse of the building.

All aspects of the 911 story have been massaged over and over when they were found wanting. This is the latest NIST-report-applicable bit of massaging. Either the shape shifting monster of disinformation has found a new shape or these are, I would maintain, somewhat narrowly focussed exponents of the official version.

We are told that the plane went through the building like "hot lava". As a creative writing wannabe I admire the phraseology, but as a truther on the verge of carpal tunnel syndrome, I don't buy it.

Steel is not steel. There are so many factors involved such as the tpe of steel, the thinkness, the size, etc etc.

UL labs has done extensive testing to show the results of different thicknesses of fire protection coating on steel and the effect and this shows that the fire proofing most certainly has an effect on the temperature. Now on a really thick beam? Won't be as dramatic. On thin beams such as the trussing, much more dramatic.