Anyone ever done this? Are there people here who would give it a shot? I have no means to build such a thing, but it would be interesting to see what would happen if you demo'd a model that was 6 feet tall, or so.

Where would the debris go, how far?

If it fell over from fire, would the top just fall over? Or would the whole thing implode?

reply to post by coney

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Sounds like a perfect topic for the Mythbusters TV show...

Although they had a go at debunking some of the moon landing hoax theories with some help from NASA, I remember hearing that they wouldn't go anywhere near the 9/11 conspiracies though (shame... would be an interesting show, eh?)

Any keen model makers out there on ATS?

Thermite gnawing away at paperclip columns......

On a more serious note , i`d imagine it would need to be of a certain height/weight composition etc ...... i`m guessing a lot bigger than 6 feet.
Depend on what theory you are testing. There would be a limit as to how small it could be. IMHO.

reply to post by coney

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The reason no one has attempted a scaled down model is because the behavior of steel is not a linear relationship. The behavior depends on what is called the "moment of inertia". Moment of Inertia or I is based off of distances to the centriod (neutral axis). So, having a scaled model would not react in the same way as a full scale building.

As an example:

Bending stress is calculated by Mc/I where M equals the bending moment, c equals the distance to the centroid and I is the moment of Inertia which is also calculated from distances to the centroid.

So, distances to the centroid/neutral axis are very important when it comes to structural engineering.