Professional engineer Jon Cole cuts steel columns with thermate, debunks Nat Geo & unexpectedly repr

reply to post by ANOK


We know for sure there were fires and we know for sure fires can reach such temperatures. I am not sure how the the text you quote prove that fires could not have reached 800 degrees in one hour. But even if they didn't, that doesn't prove that the fires could not have weakened the steel to point of failure. That is also not claimed in the paper. It said "at such temperatures". Another study shows that 700 degrees is enough. Anyhow, the collapse initiation is not really the topic, it is the collapse dynamics.

reply to post by ANOK

There is NO evidence that any steel was heated anything close to 800°C. If it did it would be a small local area, it could not cause all the undamaged building to give up its resistance.

You’re absolutely correct; this has been one of my arguments for many years. NIST fail to address this problem and I haven’t see any science to prove anything could melt the WTC steel in such a short time.

Prove that fires got hot enough to cause the whole building to fail you'll have something.

The debunkers cannot, and this is where the OS of the WTC falls apart.

The steel in the WTC was tested to withstand 2200 degree heat for several hours, yet airplane fuel only burns around 1500 degrees.

reply to post by -PLB-


Here is what I'm talking about. Others have pointed out separate issues with these papers but this is the one that most catches my attention:

In a one-dimensional model pursued here, one may use
the following estimate:
 =
1 − outV1/V0
1
where V0=initial volume of the tower; V1volume of the rubble
on the ground into which the whole tower mass has been compacted,
and out=correction representing mainly the fraction of
the rubble that has been ejected during collapse outside the perimeter
of the tower and thus does not resist compaction. The
rubble that has not been ejected during collapse but was pushed
outside the tower perimeter only after landing on the heap on the
ground should not be counted in out. The volume of the rubble
found outside the footprint of the tower, which can be measured
by surveying the rubble heap on the ground after the collapse, is
an upper bound on V1, but probably much too high a bound for
serving as an estimate.

What he is saying here is that too much of the mass was apparently ejected from the buildings during the collapses to provide a sufficient amount of mass to allow his pile-driver action.


Here are a few images to acquaint you a little more with this issue.



The above is from the FEMA report and shows the distribution of debris. Notice they used circles, indicating that the debris spread generally didn't tend to favor any one direction over any other, except in all 4 directions opposite from where the walls originally stood, as if they were just generally blasted outwards.


Here are the building footprints after the "collapses":




What little is sitting inside of them, reflects what little amount of mass actually plummeted straight down into the footprints of the buildings during "collapse," obviously. The amount that is distributed outside of the footprints, indicates what was ejected from the buildings, except for whatever landed in the footprint and then rolled or leaned or etc. out of the footprint, which as you can see would not provide very much more mass than what is already in the footprints.


Here are some other photos to illustrate this further:



Again, the amount of building that is no longer in the footprint, is equal to the amount that was ejected during "collapse." It is obviously the vast majority of the building mass.




You can see above that the pile remaining in the footprint of WTC1 was not enough to extend beyond the tree-columns used at the ground-floor lobby. Also note that a "stump" of WTC1's core structure was intact at ground level, so that is not even all loose debris but also intact structure below there.





In Bazant's papers he has to assume 50% of the total building mass remains within the footprints to provide the bare minimum of mass he needs to accomplish collapse in the given amount of time, and as much as 95% of the mass remains within the footprints to satisfy other parts of his analysis. We're not seeing 50% of the total mass in either footprint, let alone 95%, which is ridiculous. In another paper separate from the two you just linked, he focused on calculating the amount of potential gravitational energy available and talks about this in more detail. He tries to justify using these high percentages of total mass remaining in the footprints because he says when he doesn't, the collapse takes longer than it did in reality. So he has to trade off between either accurately reflecting the real collapse times, or accurately reflecting the real amount of debris that was ejected from the buildings. He can't achieve both simultaneously.

So what you have to ask yourself is whether you are seeing 50% to 95% of either tower's mass sitting in its footprint after the collapse is over, because that is one thing Bazant requires. I'm not seeing it. Out of 110 stories worth of mass, there isn't even enough left in the footprint to extend higher than the lobby even with an intact core structure beneath it.


Here is the other paper where he (or one of the paper authors) discusses this in more detail: click

Some lay critics claim that out should be about 95%, in the (mistaken) belief that this
would give a faster collapse and thus vindicate their allegation of free fall. However, such out
value would actually extend the duration of collapse of North Tower by about 2.11 s (and 1.50
s for out = 90%) because the effect of stage (c) would become dominant. Agreement with the
seismic record would thus be lost. This is one reason why values out > 0.5 are unrealistic.
These lay critics claim that the mass shedding fraction out was about the same as the
percentage of rubble found after the collapse outside the footprint of the tower. The maximum
estimate of this percentage is indeed 95%.

They then go on to give 4 erroneous reasons for their assumption of 50-95% of the total building mass remaining within the footprints, but let's look at this paragraph first.

First of all, it isn't just "lay" critics making this claim. Other engineers who have been responding to these papers have pointed out the same issues, like mechanical engineer Gordon Ross, as one example. Either way you notice they are already using a form of ad hominem in an otherwise very professional paper, and one has to wonder why the need to become so defensive here unless they realize this is a problem for their theory. Which it is.

They then say that if the k-out values are adjusted to reflect reality, they would not only lose an accurate modeling of the collapse time but of the seismic energy left over in the end as well, and argue for the sake of their model that this is an acceptable reason for dismissing the amount of debris seen inside and outside of the footprints after collapses. Notice however that they even agree that as much as 95% of the mass was in fact ejected out of the buildings during collapse.

Then the four other reasons they give for ignoring the above data:

However, aside from the comparisons with video and
seismic records, there are four further reasons indicating that a major portion of the rubble
seen on the ground after the collapse must have spread outside the tower footprint only after
the crush-down, i.e., after the impact of the falling compacted layer onto the ground:
1) One is a physical analogy with the mechanics of rigid foams. Compressing an object in
one direction expels mass laterally only if the compressed object consists of a volumetrically
incompressible mass, as in compressing clay. But, if the object has much empty space, as in the
case of the twin towers, one must expect a similar behavior as in penetration of a hard missile
into a rigid foam, in which case almost no mass is spread laterally.
2) The large steel fragments move virtually in a free fall, much faster than the dust. If out
were almost 1, many of them would be expected to move ahead of the lower margin of dust
cloud. Yet the photographs show the density of falling steel fragments visible in the air to be
far too small to account for most of the mass of the steel frame.
3) If most of the mass were falling in the air outside the tower perimeter, one would have to
expect a seismic signal with continuous mild tremors, in which the arrival of the crushing front
to the ground would not be clearly differentiated. But it is.
4) One may also consider the dust density in the cloud. For the first two stories of collapse
(i.e., first 1.3 second), the cloud volume seen in the photos can be approximated as the volume
of four half-cylinders with horizontal axis and diameters equal to the height of two stories and
lengths equal to the tower side. This gives about 6000 m3. On the ground, the dust density
was reported by EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to be about 339 kg/m3. But in the
air, the average dust density could not have been more than 10% of the dust density on the
ground; this gives, for the dust portion of out, at most 0.05, during the first 1.3 s of collapse.

Following along with each of these reasons,

#1 is a purely theoretical argument and has no relation with actual observations of mass being ejected during collapses, and all of the mass that ended up outside of the footprints can indeed be seen being physically ejected during the collapses.

With #2 they claim that they don't see enough steel flying through the air to account for the amount that was then found to be spread all over the ground, but offer nothing more than their opinions on this and don't try to explain how so much mass could otherwise be spread over such a large radius.

#3 assumes the large seismic spike was caused by debris hitting the ground. If that massive spike was not caused by a large amount of debris hitting the ground simultaneously then this would also not hold up. The fact that the amount of debris spread actually negates this already suggests other explanations for the seismic events, and other papers have been written addressing the seismic activity.

#4 doesn't even address large masses of steel columns, etc. being ejected, but only the dust.


And again all these are just reasons to try to justify assuming that 50-95% of the building masses remained in the footprints after collapses when that much mass was clearly not present.

Are you seeing 50-95% of the mass left over in the footprints after the collapses, or do you think any of the reasons given by Bazant and his co-authors above offer sufficient reason for pretending that this mass was left in the footprints?

reply to post by -PLB-

Another study shows that 700 degrees is enough. Anyhow, the collapse initiation is not really the topic, it is the collapse dynamics.

How is it, that 700 degrees is able to melt the WTC steel that was tested to withstand 2200 degrees heat for several hours?

I would love to see the science that supports this impossibility?

Originally posted by plube
reply to post by -PLB-

 

What i am saying is the energy from the mass of the top of the building would be transfered to the entire lower structure...due to the laws of the conservation of momentum and engery...

What do you mean by "transfered to the entire lower structure"? Don't you mean to say "transfered to whatever it hits"? And this "whatever" would be the lower floors, which are designed to hold their own weight, not all the upper floors.

but what we see in the towers is the upper section does not even get to the point of where that energy is conserved as the top is collapsing on itself well before it even starts to have aeffect on the lower structure.

What do you mean? It seems to me that for the part the top is visible it is mostly intact. What happens after it gets obscured by dust is unknown.

not only that it is expelling debris at high rates of velocity horizontally....now a logical person would ask themselves why should that be the case since the only force acting on the structure is gravity.

A fair question. My answer would be that the columns are both pushed aside by the falling debris, as well as ejected as result of the force that is released when either the joints fail or the they buckle.

that is why so much of the OS comes into question....now the latest Bazant paper was to try to cover up the flaws from the original Bazant Zho paper that was so flawed.
Now i have given you sites to go too...and so i think you might be interested in going to them and debunking them.
I have presented loads and will continue to present more but it is nice when people look themselves also...just as i will go read more of the papers you kindly presented...but the latest Bazant paper is still full of holes and Bazant is trying hard not to become NIST's scapegoat by saying they took the advice of these Engineers.
You what what these papers Bazant's included is they don't take into account how the Mass of the upper section fails as the Mass should have stayed for the most part intact through most of the collapse.
And in building 7 there is not top down collaspe as there was no plane that hit it...no jet fuels involved..and the only conclusion is fire....which would not have brought down a STEEL structure through Progressive collapse.

I hear this every time in a discussion about these collapses. I should go read sites, do my own research. I rather just get the facts presented by someone who already did this, saves me tones of time I am not really willing to invest. It seems to me that this is the whole point of a discussion board like this, sharing with other why you think the conspiracy is correct, and the official explanation is wrong, or the other way around of course. What else would be the point of posting here?

reply to post by impressme


We recently agreed we think so differently that communication is rather useless. Since again I have no idea what you are talking about, as nowhere anyone is talking about melting steel, I think we should honor this agreement.

Originally posted by Drunkenparrot

Originally posted by bsbray11
Can you show me where this was empirically established? You know, with actual data and scientific evidence, instead of just "because I say so"?

The collapse of both WTC towers being due solely to gravity was empirically established by Sir Isaac Newton on July 5 1687 with the publication of his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

Really? So Newton was a psychic and prophet too? And just think of all the trouble NIST and FEMA could have saved themselves if they only knew this fact.

Can you direct me to the pages of the Principia that discuss the WTC collapses please?

I was hoping to peacefully bow out of this debate but if you think you can provide an alternate force to accelerate the mass of the buildings towards the earth I'm all ears?

I wasn't questioning that gravity was the force that brought them down, I was questioning your suggestion that the planes and fires alone were responsible for this. If that's not actually what you're arguing, then we are in agreement after all.

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by -PLB-
Without study I won't be able to produce a basic model that describes a building collapse. I am not trained to do that.

Neither are structural engineers. They study statics. Collapsing buildings would fall under "dynamics" in physics, since everything is not static and not every load is assumed to have an equivalent normal force. All the structural engineers have done in these investigations is try to get to an event where the loads can't be met by the structural integrity anymore, and then they throw their hands up and say what happens next must have been "inevitable." Of course.

Now its your turn.

Everything you just wrote is flat wrong. Not some, not part but everything.

I'm pretty sure you already knew that or in the least had a strong intuition that might be the case.

Would you care to source where any structural engineering curriculum on the planet doesn't study "dynamics" only "statics"?

What do you think happens everytime somebody sets a heavy box on the floor or wind blows against the wall?

The bit about structural engineers being unable to describe the mechanics of the building collapse, they just shrugged and said "yep, you got me" huh?

Everything needed to calculate the energy released in any structural failure that ever has been or ever will be is well covered in Newtons Principia, if you don't understand that then you are lacking the education necessary to provide you with the tools needed to pursue this angle of debate and it shows.

Seriously, a couple of you are either just making things up that sound good or wherever you are getting your information is lying to you.

reply to post by bsbray11

#1 is a purely theoretical argument and has no relation with actual observations of mass being ejected during collapses, and all of the mass that ended up outside of the footprints can indeed be seen being physically ejected during the collapses.

Your correct and videos show steel beams being hurled over 500 feet outward, and some were hurled with such force that photos showed huge steel beams stuck in other buildings over 500 feet away. The only thing that can cause such a force of energy is only demolition; nothing else will stand up to science at this point.

reply to post by -PLB-

How is it, that 700 degrees is able to melt the WTC steel that was tested to withstand 2200 degrees heat for several hours?

I would love to see the science that supports this impossibility?

We recently agreed we think so differently that communication is rather useless. Since again I have no idea what you are talking about, as nowhere anyone is talking about melting steel, I think we should honor this agreement.

Thank you for your scientific reply to my above question.

When science is applied to your nonsense the only thing you can do is “bail out.”

Originally posted by bsbray11

Really? So Newton was a psychic and prophet too? And just think of all the trouble NIST and FEMA could have saved themselves if they only knew this fact.

Can you direct me to the pages of the Principia that discuss the WTC collapses please?

Page 42 of the Ebook I linked in the previous post. Book 1, Section 1 "of the motion of bodies" is a good start.

I wasn't questioning that gravity was the force that brought them down, I was questioning your suggestion that the planes and fires alone were responsible for this. If that's not actually what you're arguing, then we are in agreement after all.

Much wiser men than I are still furiously locked in debate over that question and probably will be for some time so I plead the 5th.

Originally posted by -PLB-
reply to post by Malcram

 

Did you think I would not notice that you changed "not resisting the mass" to "not providing any resistance"? Of course there is resistance, that doesn't mean it will resist the mass.

As for those scientists, lets start with the ones that have published about it, like Bažant, Zdeněk P., Jia-Liang Le, Frank R. Greening, David B. Benson, Dr. H. S. Lew, Dr. Fahim H. Sadek, Dr. Frank W. Gayle, Dr. David D. Evans, Dr. Richard G. Gann etc.

True, you can argue whether they are brilliant or not, but that is a rather subjective. At least they have published, unlike any scientist who supports your idea.

Zdeněk Bažant's paper as I recall was an early suggestion not written in stone...what is? anyway it required the total collapse from top down which was not the case, the core survived momentarily, in effect then there were two collapses, one after the other, of the outer "tube" and all the contents between it and the inner "tube" the core, and then the cores own collapse. There are also stills showing the upper parts of the buildings above the fire zone falling out and away, and in total disintegration from that below, and so a huge amount of possible critical mass not impeding on the structure below. In the case of the mast on WTC1 falling in as if before a total collapse I am not sure about that, as it could be just an illusion since WTC1 also bent over as its top portion fell. The mast is simply bending over as well, directly away from the camera in the video as is most often seen.

Originally posted by Drunkenparrot
Now its your turn.

Yay.

Everything you just wrote is flat wrong. Not some, not part but everything.

Oh, okay. So structural engineers don't study statics?

I'm pretty sure you already knew that or in the least had a strong intuition that might be the case.

I'm pretty sure you're either confused about what I posted, or the word "everything."

Would you care to source where any structural engineering curriculum on the planet doesn't study "dynamics" only "statics"?

Well I have a massive civil and structural engineering textbook that covers everything that appears on their PE and analyses of dynamic systems don't appear anywhere in the book. There's hydraulic properties of soil and rock, drainage, roadway design, properties of materials, sections on building codes, static analysis.... But where is any analyses of dynamic systems? Oops, looks like it's not there and you're wrong.

The closest structural engineers come to studying dynamic systems like building collapses, is studying kinematics in physics 101, and elastic materials properties. But those are not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an area of physics that at present can only be modeled with computers because of its complexity. SE's don't study that.

What do you think happens everytime somebody sets a heavy box on the floor or wind blows against the wall?

A skyscraper collapses?

The bit about structural engineers being unable to describe the mechanics of the building collapse, they just shrugged and said "yep, you got me" huh?

Pretty much, that's exactly what NIST "said." They never tried to analyze the global collapses because they said it was too complicated. Maybe I've unknowingly been transferred over into a parallel universe where NIST actually did do that analysis, and you can show it to me?

Everything needed to calculate the energy released in any structural failure that ever has been or ever will be is well covered in Newtons Principia, if you don't understand that then you are lacking the education necessary to provide you with the tools needed to pursue this angle of debate and it shows.

Newton's Principia doesn't even cover material properties. Maybe you just learned about Principia for the first time and want to throw it around or something, but they didn't have skyscrapers 400 years ago, nor anywhere near the engineering knowledge to address the things you are talking about.

Seriously, a couple of you are either just making things up that sound good or wherever you are getting your information is lying to you.

I can't wait for you to start providing sources for where you're getting your completely misinformed ideas from.

Originally posted by Drunkenparrot

Can you direct me to the pages of the Principia that discuss the WTC collapses please?

Page 42 of the Ebook I linked in the previous post. Book 1, Section 1 "of the motion of bodies" is a good start.

Let me ask you something else.

Do you know what a free-body diagram is, and can you solve one if I post it?

I wasn't questioning that gravity was the force that brought them down, I was questioning your suggestion that the planes and fires alone were responsible for this. If that's not actually what you're arguing, then we are in agreement after all.

Much wiser men than I are still furiously locked in debate over that question and probably will be for some time so I plead the 5th.

Well at least we agree about that much.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Are you seeing 50-95% of the mass left over in the footprints after the collapses, or do you think any of the reasons given by Bazant and his co-authors above offer sufficient reason for pretending that this mass was left in the footprints?

I can't really tell. It would not have "rolled out", but the enormous amount of kinetic energy would result in all kind of, to me, unpredictable forces. I don't find it unrealistic. When you drop a compact stack of nails on the ground you will also end up with a big mess. Even when the stack is still intact on impact.

reply to post by bsbray11


You are not the first to get the "making it up" syndromic remark. I put it down to dishonest people in subjects like 9/11. Once that is said they are not worth engaging.

reply to post by bsbray11


Maybe an interesting counter question would be what force could have caused the majority of the debris to be pushed outside during the collapse. I don't see an obvious mechanism for this. Sure, part will be ejected by the buckling and breaking of the columns, as well as debris pushing it, but to get a majority pushed out doesn't make that much sense to me.

Originally posted by -PLB-

Originally posted by bsbray11
Are you seeing 50-95% of the mass left over in the footprints after the collapses, or do you think any of the reasons given by Bazant and his co-authors above offer sufficient reason for pretending that this mass was left in the footprints?

I can't really tell.

You can't really tell if 50% of a tower's total mass remains in either one of these footprints?








See those tree-columns at the ground-level lobby in that black and white photo? The debris stack that remained in the footprints didn't extend higher than those columns. And that's with WTC1's core structure still intact at ground level below that pile.


You really can't tell whether 50% of the buildings' mass remains in the 1st photo here or not?

You know 50% means "half," right?

Let me put it this way. Do you think you could rebuild half of either WTC tower using just what you see still in the footprints above, if the columns and trusses were straightened back out? What about 60%? 70%? 95%?



Come on man, I know you know better than this. Where is your confidence?

reply to post by bsbray11


I can't tell if it happened during or after collapse (by that I mean the moment the main mass hits the ground). How should I be able to determine that?

Originally posted by -PLB-
I can't tell if it happened during or after collapse. How should I be able to determine that?

Well let me ask this.

What is the maximum distance you think a multi-ton steel column can bounce or otherwise move itself once it hits the other debris at the bottom?