How Does Aluminum Cut Steel?

reply to post by Infoman

ok heres a simple explanation for the debris field. the detonations where not intended to look exactly like an implosion and it was a very quick job they must have done to plant the explosives. normally it takes week for a demo crew to set up these guys had to have done it in just a few days and only a few hours at a time. as for the steel i believe a few colleges around the country do have the molten pieces of steel they managed to get for their programs studies. actually i believe is an understatement ive seen some guy in a coat from some geoscience research team sitting in front of a piece of mottled steel talking about how the salvage crews found it still in liquid form like 5 weeks after the towers fell.

Looking at it in a realistic manner, the only way steel could remain molten in the rubble for 5 weeks is with a thermal input great enough to actually melt it right there so there's no implication that it was originally melted at the time of collapse unless some just happened to settle adjacent to the heat source after collapse.

So what could have burnt at such a high temperature for so long?
How about aluminium which burns at >4000C which is more than enough to melt steel with ease. The planes smashing their way into the buildings delivered approx 100000kg of aluminium and associated alloys which were pulverised (increased surface area), not to mention the aluminium contents of the buildings themselves and there's no question of the extreme heat in the rubble fires.

Originally posted by Pilgrum
If you don't mind me saying so, you seem to have a lot of faith in this yet to be seen FBI report resolving all issues.

Well people that still believe the official stroy put a lot of faith in the media and NIST reports.

I would really like to know how someone that believes the official story can state they know what happened that day even though only about 1/4 of the facts and evidence has been released?

reply to post by ULTIMA1
I tend to lean on facts rather than stories whether they're official or not.

reply to post by badtommy


except that high explosives, for all the power they deliver, transfer very little heat energy (thermal that is) to what they are blasting. the detonation speeds of most HE's are around 26,000fps, even something like ANFO detonates at around 8000fps (im not pulling out my books to get exact numbers, they are close enough for this instance)

they simply move too fast to deliver a lot of thermal energy to the steel, isnt this covered by basic Caloric theory?

Originally posted by Pilgrum
I tend to lean on facts rather than stories whether they're official or not.

What facts ?

A lare majority of the facts and evidence has not been released, so where are you getting your facts from ?

Originally posted by Damocles
except that high explosives, for all the power they deliver, transfer very little heat energy (thermal that is) to what they are blasting. the detonation speeds of most HE's are around 26,000fps, even something like ANFO detonates at around 8000fps (im not pulling out my books to get exact numbers, they are close enough for this instance)

Exept for thermite explosives / bombs or thermite fuel-air mix.

reply to post by ULTIMA1


except that i specified "high explosives"...and actually used the words "high explosives"

thermite/mate/whatever is NOT considered by anyone to be a high explosive and is not used for any high explosive applications. you wont try to blast rock with it, not going to take out a road with it, we use C4 or TNT to cut steel in the military, not going to use it to take out mines, i just have no idea what it would be good for and really have no idea why people are so convinced its got anything to do with demolitions work at all. dont people suppose that if "thermite cutter charges" existed that the army would be all about using them to take out bridges without all the noise that C4 or TNT makes? hell if nothing else, it would be FABULOUS for use in taking out our own MGB's in a hurry cuz to prep one of those for demo with C4 takes HOURS. (and its a pain to climb down to some of the key points once its in place too)

there are thermite "grenades" but they are labeled as incendiary grenades. they do not "explode", this i guarantee. i have stood within 5 meters of one when it was set off. it was set on the hood of an old jeep and all it did was burn through the hood. not what id call an explosive.

thermite explosive? wouldnt happen to have a nomenclature on that would you? ive never used it, and ive used all the HE that the military uses in demo ops (ANFO, TNT, Dynamite, PETN, C4(rdx))

never heard of a thermite bomb, but that would be more airforce anyway, you wont see us grunts carrying any type of "bomb" (bomb is in military terms used to describe something dropped from a plane afterall as i know you are aware)

would you be so kind as to throw me the nomenclature of it so i can look it up by its part/nsn number?

thermite FAB? i know things like the moab and daisy cutters use magnesium powder, like flashbangs. wasnt aware we had any that used thermite specifically...got a nomenclature for me, or is my info on the FAB's wrong and they use thermite and NOT magnesium? again, as a footie i wouldnt have any need to know the tech specs on these items and would love to read up on them just for fun.

but ill say again, there are NO HIGH EXPLOSIVES used in blasting work that have thermite as a component that i am aware of.

(MGB=medium girder bridge. its like a huge aluminum alloy erector set that can be thrown up 165ft in 6 hrs by 2 platoons of engineers and will take a 70ton tank)

Aluminum in this case didn't "cut" steel anyways.

It broke the steel.

A similar question would be how does a lead bullet cut through a car's door?

It doesn't, it breaks its way through.

Originally posted by Seymour Butz
Aluminum in this case didn't "cut" steel anyways.

It broke the steel.

A similar question would be how does a lead bullet cut through a car's door?

It doesn't, it breaks its way through.

exactly.

past that its mass and velocity.

if we took 100lbs of feathers and compressed them down to the size of a golf ball and fired it at a chunk of structural steel at 700fps, my bet is that its going to go through or at the very least put an impressive dent in it (700fps for 100lbs probably isnt quite enough to be armor piercing but i think ya'll get the point)

people hear "aluminum 'cutting' steel" and probably think mt dew can vs steel I beam. well, many "aluminum" parts on an aircraft im guessing are big, heavy, dense structural pieces, and theres probably quite a lot of it in a jet aircraft.

what i cant believe is that anyone smart enough to have been following many of the 911 discussions really thinks theirs a problem with this.

but thats just me i suppose

Originally posted by Damocles
people hear "aluminum 'cutting' steel" and probably think mt dew can vs steel I beam. well, many "aluminum" parts on an aircraft im guessing are big, heavy, dense structural pieces, and theres probably quite a lot of it in a jet aircraft.

Not to mention that most of the aluminum used on planes is a composite or alloy and is actually stronger than steel.

When alloy is designed to the same standards as steel (ABS, Lloyds or other similar classification society), it is made to be higher in overall strength.

The short answer to our original question is that in terms of strength, presuming an alloy and a steel vessel of the same design have been engineered correctly, they will have very nearly the same strength, with the balance tipped somewhat in favor of aluminum, both in terms of overall yield, and in terms of ultimate failure.

www.kastenmarine.com...

Originally posted by Griff
Not to mention that most of the aluminum used on planes is a composite or alloy and is actually stronger than steel.

www.tms.org...

The only individual metal component of the aircraft that is comparable in strength to the box perimeter columns of the WTC is the keel beam at the bottom of the aircraft fuselage.

[edit on 15-6-2008 by ULTIMA1]

reply to post by ULTIMA1


what about when you add velocity to the mix?

i mean comparing one individual chunk to another in static conditions is pretty pointless isnt it? even 1to1, 1 of them was moving rather fast...

Originally posted by Damocles
what about when you add velocity to the mix?

Well yes that brings up the point that if small birds can put holes in the wings and airframe at slow speeds how can wings and airframe be strong enough to cut heavier, stronger steel?

reply to post by ULTIMA1


which of course then begs the question, are these birds penetrating the sheet aluminum of the wings/airframe or are they puncturing the heavy spars that the rest of the airframe is fastened to?

how slow is slow?

how much IS that doggie in the window? you know, the one with the waggly tail?

Originally posted by Damocles
how slow is slow?

The small birds put holes in the wings and airframe of this 767 at takeoff. A lot slower then the speed of the planes hitting the towers or Pentagon.

i114.photobucket.com...

i114.photobucket.com...

i114.photobucket.com...

i114.photobucket.com...

reply to post by ULTIMA1


but thats still a bit different than if they had punched holes in some of the skeleton parts of the plane no? no sure anyones going to argue that the sheet aluminum that covers the wings skeleton is what damaged the building but rather the part of the skeleton that holds the wing rigid against the oncoming air.

how slow is takeoff speed?

any info on those thermite explosives i asked about a few posts up?

how bout that doggie? (just kidding. if we take ourselves too seriously all the time we'll burn out )

Originally posted by tep200377

dont make me laugh you cant compare the two

[edit on 20-11-2007 by h2owater]

And why is that? Why cant i compare aluminium/steel with water/steel, when my example is much more far out?

its not much more far out. everything about your example is engineered to cut steel. even the water is a different chemical. planes aren't, and they usually don't.

Thank you for explaining how water cuts steel. The OP asked how aluminum did it in a specific instance.

Originally posted by Seymour Butz
Aluminum in this case didn't "cut" steel anyways.

It broke the steel.

A similar question would be how does a lead bullet cut through a car's door?

It doesn't, it breaks its way through.

Yes it's as simple as that despite the chorus of opposition - it bashed its way through by creating sufficient point pressure to exceed the UTS of the outer columns. The MIT study of the phenomenon suggests that it took less than 20% of the total momentum to cause that result.

And as an indication of just how sturdy (or not) those columns were at the height of the impact zone, here's the panel section torn from the south side of WTC1 by the landing gear wedged in it. Note also that this is another example of the structure failing at the joins, not mid-section.