RFC: Bazant and Zhou Simple Analysis refuted [Archive] - Page 2

stateofgrace

15th January 2008, 03:06 AM

Some maybe Off Topic comments to above (they are Off Shore :-)

<snip>

Your obedient servant later sorted out the matter at minimum cost and highest safety. Obviously the (ir)responsible parties prefer to be anonymous.

Stop lying and stay on topic as requested by the OPer.

The reason I have left you alone is because of the said request. Incidents of this nature are NEVER kept quiet offshore, they are reported as LTI's ( Lost Time Incidents) or NM's ( near misses) again they are industry standards and something else you are blissfully unware of. Any single incident offshore,of such a serious nature,that results in down time has to be reported and flash notices submitted to other operators.A full review would take place and lessons are then learnt to ensure it does not happen again. Offshore operators operate under the NO BLAME culture, That being no blame is ever aportioned and people are encouraged to report anything that is unsafe and all accidents/incidents must be reported.Incidents like this are viewed as a failing of procedures which are always in place for every single operation that takes place offshore. When the procedures fail or are wrong they are corrected to ensure it does not happen again.The offshore industy does not cover up incidents of this nature and they never remain anonymous apart from in your fantasy world.Here they remain anonymous of course so nobody can check out your ludicious stories.

I could ask you to tell me who the operator was, who's crane it was, who contracted you etc, ect but since you lied anyway there is no point.

In future stay on topic or don't post in this thread or as requested by the OPer start a new thread.

Keep living the dream.

Dave Rogers

15th January 2008, 03:07 AM

Using your value of 414MJ (should be somewhat less) for the losses in the initial failure and 4m/sec. The wave propagates all the way to the ground. I'm still splitting the energy evenly between the upper and lower springs which isn't realistic. I end up with an overload ratio of 1.00.

Speaking as a scientist, I would say that an overload ratio of 1.00 doesn't prove collapse propagation would occur. Speaking as a hypothetical juror on a criminal case where it's the key evidence for the prosecution, though, I'd say it's good enough for an instant acquittal.

Dave

einsteen

15th January 2008, 03:42 AM

If you go to http://wtc.nist.gov/WTC_Conf_Sep13-15/session6/6McAllister.pdf
then there is one picture with a time stamp 09:53
the 9:58:55 pictures clearly show inward bowing but at that moment the collapse was almost starting. No idea what they want to say with 09:21, it's a little bit a fuzzy report. It looks indeed like during the time after the impact the fire had a relevant influence on that wall (although I would like to see a longer movie) but it is hard to imagine that only this is responsible for the total failure of all the columns, see this view for example (difference 3 seconds)

http://i16.tinypic.com/6z9i9e9.jpg
http://i16.tinypic.com/6z9i9e9.jpg

How can that wall initiate collapse while the core is still standing? On the other hand I'm also no fool and understand that it is also hard to imagine that something like (conventional) explosives would survive there. Greening said that the initiation in fact started with the plane impact and that the toppling was in fact ongoing but not visible.

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 04:36 AM

Speaking as a scientist, I would say that an overload ratio of 1.00 doesn't prove collapse propagation would occur. Speaking as a hypothetical juror on a criminal case where it's the key evidence for the prosecution, though, I'd say it's good enough for an instant acquittal.

Dave

Suppose Bazant's paper is the only evidence, what does the hypothetical juror say in terms of finding the building guilty of collapse propagation?

Dave Rogers

15th January 2008, 04:51 AM

Suppose Bazant's paper is the only evidence, what does the hypothetical juror say in terms of finding the building guilty of collapse propagation?

Guilty beyond reasonable doubt. To anticipate your next question, based on your results so far and my understanding of the mechanics, I'd still say guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The requirements of legal proof are IMHO rather more lax than those of scientific proof, and at the moment with an overload of 1.00 I'd say you're precisely on the edge of scientific proof.

Dave

twinstead

15th January 2008, 05:39 AM

Unfortunately for many truthers, Bazant's paper isn't even close to being the only evidence.

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 05:58 AM

Guilty beyond reasonable doubt. To anticipate your next question, based on your results so far and my understanding of the mechanics, I'd still say guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The requirements of legal proof are IMHO rather more lax than those of scientific proof, and at the moment with an overload of 1.00 I'd say you're precisely on the edge of scientific proof.

Dave

I thought of a couple of remaining issues or extenuating circumstances if you will.

1) The upper block floor-truss structure (outer) (98) hits the lower floor (97) prior to column-column impact. Energy is consumed here, but more important, the floor is dissociated from the structure by failure at its connections (i.e. the bolts) prior to column-column impact so it's weight should not be considered in the mgh energy. Essentially the floor impact occurs prior to and independent of the column-column impact.

2) The floor support (i.e. horizontal members) will also come into contact and must fail for the columns to be able to impact each other. Here we are talking about 112 substantial members which will require a significant amount of energy. These members are probably equivalent to the columns and there are twice as many so a very conservative strain energy would be 100 MJ. No doubt this would contribute to eccentricity of the vertical columns making buckling more likely, but Bazant is ignoring this.

3) The floors of the upper part will flex significantly under the force of decelleration absorbing some amount of energy.

If these issues amount to 100 MJ and the weight is subtracted, the overload ratio would be 0.56. Just removing the single floor weight gives 0.91.

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 06:02 AM

Unfortunately for many truthers, Bazant's paper isn't even close to being the only evidence.

Is there any other support for the hypothesis that gravity driven collapse would continue all the way to the ground?

einsteen

15th January 2008, 06:04 AM

I checked NIST NCSTAR1-5A and it is amazing that all these effects are ongoing during that late period, one would expect an exponential decay of effects. On the one hand one would expect that (to initiate initiation) there is always a very small movement (like I remember Greening saying) of the top section, a constant but small angular motion (too small to be measured within the resolution of the images) because that explains (from a theoretical point of view) how small rotational energy can "overcome" resistance.

If you look at a simple theoretical 1d model then imho you can never prove that initiation is possible if there is no initial movement, even when there is initial movement it is very difficult because a small velocity implies Ekin<E1 and that is something that will be arrested. If E1 for the weakest story is very low then a small initial movement can be overcomed (sorry if that is no proper English) but then the next story will do its job. Of course the real situation is a complex 3d model, but I think it is strange that the strain energy of the other walls (west, east, intact part of north) seems to have no affect and then also not the core itself that is still there!, the rotational energy is very low and why isn't that absorbed ? Anyone can explain that ? Mackey, Dave, Newtons, Apollo20 , Greg, Heiwa etc ?

Dave Rogers

15th January 2008, 06:25 AM

I thought of a couple of remaining issues or extenuating circumstances if you will.

1) The upper block floor-truss structure (outer) (98) hits the lower floor (97) prior to column-column impact. Energy is consumed here, but more important, the floor is dissociated from the structure by failure at its connections (i.e. the bolts) prior to column-column impact so it's weight should not be considered in the mgh energy. Essentially the floor impact occurs prior to and independent of the column-column impact.

2) The floor support (i.e. horizontal members) will also come into contact and must fail for the columns to be able to impact each other. Here we are talking about 112 substantial members which will require a significant amount of energy. These members are probably equivalent to the columns and there are twice as many so a very conservative strain energy would be 100 MJ. No doubt this would contribute to eccentricity of the vertical columns making buckling more likely, but Bazant is ignoring this.

3) The floors of the upper part will flex significantly under the force of decelleration absorbing some amount of energy.

These are all valid points, but in considering them you now have to consider whether they separate the floors from the columns, and, if so, whether pancake failure of the floors is going to take place as a result. You'd then need to work out the energetics of a floor-by-floor-with-off-axis-column-impacts collapse, which I suspect would be far more energetically favourable than a 1-D model.

By even raising those issues you're asserting that the Bazant model is inadequate to analyse the collapse, so you're implicitly saying that a more complex model that treats the floors separately from the columns is needed. I'd be inclined to agree with that, but it appears computationally intractable. In short, rather than refuting Bazant's conclusions, you've challenged the validity of his model.

Is there any other support for the hypothesis that gravity driven collapse would continue all the way to the ground?

There are some very simple energetic considerations that imply that if floor 98 collapses floor 97 then the collapse will propagate, and Greening's papers are probably the best analysis of them. 98 on 97 is the crux, though. I wonder whether that would be possible to model in a 3D approximation?

Of course, there's also the negative evidence side of things, in that no plausible evidence has been brought forward for anything other than gravity driven collapse, and the absence of flash and sufficiently loud reports strongly suggests the absence of explosives. I realise you may see that as an evasion, but it places a strong burden of proof on those challenging gravity driven collapse; you need to prove it was physically impossible, not just unlikely, because it would need to stand alone as evidence.

Dave

Heiwa

15th January 2008, 06:44 AM

e^n

15th January 2008, 07:01 AM

Coming back to the now infamous photo of WTC1 South face at 10.23 am Therese McAllister of Nist admits that most values of indent depth indicated on the photo are uncertain as the area is covered by smoke on the photo. OK, so the obvious question is then why not use another photo, without smoke? I.e. do a better job!

NIST used several photos for each tower, it's very hard to get a picture without smoke when the towers are pouring out smoke.

Major_Tom

15th January 2008, 07:06 AM

It is the 1-D aspect to the model which forces the analysis down a very narrow path.

1-D means that falling object MUST hit objects below it.

In a 3-D model objects can fall right past other objects and miss them completely.

In the case of columns they may hit floor panels (this is much more highly probable).

Dave, I'm guessing you would go on to reason that this would leave many lower block columns without lateral support and they will fall from their own weight.

But how would that lead to such a COMPACT collapse front as seen in the following picture.

[IMG]http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/collapse_cloud.jpg[/IMG

Of course, there's also the negative evidence side of things, in that no plausible evidence has been brought forward for anything other than gravity driven collapse, and the absence of flash and sufficiently loud reports strongly suggests the absence of explosives.

In other threads it has been noted that the core column-to-column welds were very vulnerable to lateral impacts just along the weld on the long side of the rectangular cross-section.

It was argued by Newtons Bit among others that it wouldn't require much of a "kick" to crack the weld.

Of the methods used to split the main support columns mentioned by those crazy truthers, wouldn't this be the easiest choice for demolition planners?

To what degree would you expect to see flashed if these small devices were installed inside elevator shafts inside the core?

How loud would the individual popping sounds need to be if the welds are so easy to crack, as NB mentions?

twinstead

15th January 2008, 07:09 AM

Coming back to the now infamous photo of WTC1 South face at 10.23 am Therese McAllister of Nist admits that most values of indent depth indicated on the photo are uncertain as the area is covered by smoke on the photo. OK, so the obvious question is then why not use another photo, without smoke? I.e. do a better job!

Of course. They just needed to do a better job.

And perhaps they should have used the close-up images the special mini camera-equipped seeing-through-smoke flying pink unicorns the fire department released just before the collapses.

I find the lack of those images quite suspicious, don't you?

twinstead

15th January 2008, 07:13 AM

Of the methods used to split the main support columns mentioned by those crazy truthers, wouldn't this be the easiest choice for demolition planners?

To what degree would you expect to see flashed if these small devices were installed inside elevator shafts inside the core?

How loud would the individual popping sounds need to be if the welds are so easy to crack, as NB mentions?

Unless you can provide ANY evidence of these things, all it appears to be to an observer is hand waving away lack of evidence of CD by thinking up ways it could be accomplished, a la Max Photon. Seriously, conjecture is fun to a point but not if you are attempting to pin a mass murder rap on somebody. You'll need to do better than that.

What are you conducting, a think tank or an investigation?

Dave Rogers

15th January 2008, 07:44 AM

Dave, I'm guessing you would go on to reason that this would leave many lower block columns without lateral support and they will fall from their own weight.

But how would that lead to such a COMPACT collapse front as seen in the following picture.

Look at the picture yourself. At the bottom of the collapse front you can see a large section of perimeter columns that's falling outwards and away from the tower. If you look at the post-collapse images, you can see perimeter column trees, which have fallen away a distance several times the width of the towers. This is one side of those classic truther two-way arguments, where the debris field is at once too big and too small; these arguments only survive because their proponents won't make predictions. How big would you expect the collapse front to be if what we can see in your picture is actually happening?

Of the methods used to split the main support columns mentioned by those crazy truthers, wouldn't this be the easiest choice for demolition planners?

Non-evidence. If both the gravity collapse hypothesis and the CD hypothesis point to the weld planes as the point of fracture, then the identification of the weld planes as the point of fracture is of zero value in distinguishing between them. In fact, though, it's only the gravity hypothesis that points unequivocally to the weld planes as the point of failure; for the CD hypothesis, what you're proposing is actually a complicating factor, in that it places an unnecessary constraint on the placement of charges. You don't realise it, but you're actually presenting a fairly weak argument against CD.

To what degree would you expect to see flashed if these small devices were installed inside elevator shafts inside the core?

How loud would the individual popping sounds need to be if the welds are so easy to crack, as NB mentions?

Denying the possibility of evidence in favour of your hypothesis does not strengthen your hypothesis.

Dave

Major_Tom

15th January 2008, 08:26 AM

Non-evidence. If both the gravity collapse hypothesis and the CD hypothesis point to the weld planes as the point of fracture, then the identification of the weld planes as the point of fracture is of zero value in distinguishing between them.

Non-evidence but clearly the natural Achille's Heel within the buildings.

Both the CD and nonCD viewpoints MUST see the weld planes as the point of fracture because there is clear and overwhelming forensic photographic evidence for this.

Your point about not being able to distinguish between the 2 by looking at the welds surfaces themselves captures the essence of the argument well.

From the CD planning perspective this is pure genius.

Actually, charge placement is will utilize elevator shafts. The chief targets will be the 500 and 1000 columns. These are the most accessible through elevator shafts.

You don't realise it, but you're actually presenting a fairly weak argument against CD.

I did realize that even though people were unable to notice that the "hinges" were welds and they are separated by 38 feet, more or less, as soon as I pointed it out it would be received as further evidence towards a gravity driven collapse.

But don't we all want to know the TRUE mechanism of collapse? And isn't this information vital to that purpose?

If a person is able to think " few moves ahead", after the knee-jerk mental reaction they will realize that weld plane failure and 47 very straight 38 foot long columns all welded at the exact same elevations are not necessarily consistent with gravity collapse.

In my last point about the flashes, I was just passing the idea that the devices don't have to be that powerful and will be located for the most part in elevator shafts.

Remember the "spire" argument I gave earlier? I claim the spire consists of columns from only column rows 700 and 800. You mentioned 500 and 600 are good choices, too.

Good eye. Not many people would have noticed that so quickly (meaning you skipped the other possibilities: 600, 700 ect)

The 700 and 800 columns have a unique geometrical layout and it is not difficuly to distinguish them from the 500-600 row.

I'll hold off on the argument for now, but I know that you are smart enough to know that if the spire consists of 700-800 columns only, your notion about weld failure gravity driven collapse goes right out the window.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Newtons Bit

15th January 2008, 08:46 AM

And then of course Pdyn is dependent on the stiffness which the displacement is dependent on...

Using your value of 414MJ (should be somewhat less) for the losses in the initial failure and 4m/sec. The wave propagates all the way to the ground. I'm still splitting the energy evenly between the upper and lower springs which isn't realistic. I end up with an overload ratio of 1.00.

Where did I say 414MJ again? Typo?

Dave Rogers

15th January 2008, 08:49 AM

Your point about not being able to distinguish between the 2 by looking at the welds surfaces themselves captures the essence of the argument well.

From the CD planning perspective this is pure genius.

That's rather a tenuous argument. You're saying that the columns fractured exactly where they would have been expected to fracture, proving that the conspirators designed the collapse in such a way that they would fracture exactly where they were expected to fracture. That's just the "no evidence of a conspiracy is evidence of a conspiracy" argument.

I did realize that even though people were unable to notice that the "hinges" were welds and they are separated by 38 feet, more or less, as soon as I pointed it out it would be received as further evidence towards a gravity driven collapse.

I wish you would stop pretending to be the only person to have noticed this. It was, as Gravy keeps repeating, well-known before you came to this forum.

http://www.911myths.com/html/30_foot_lengths_of_steel.html

I'll hold off on the argument for now, but I know that you are smart enough to know that if the spire consists of 700-800 columns only, your notion about weld failure gravity driven collapse goes right out the window.

No, nothing of the sort. The collapse was a far more complex event than any of the models of it that can feasibly be constructed. To take a very simple model of such a collapse and make a confident prediction from it that only the weaker core columns will collapse is completely unwarranted. By the time the collapse has progressed to floor 50, there are large pieces of debris and framing that have fallen considerable distances impacting eccentrically on all parts of the surviving core. The shocks to the floors will be most efficiently transmitted to the outermost core columns. Any perimeter columns that fall inwards or are deflected inwards - note that, by conservation of momentum, any event that throws a perimeter column outwards must throw something else inwards - will impact sideways on the outermost core columns. The corner columns are the strongest, but they're also the most vulnerable to damage during collapse. I would not accept that any specific subset of core columns surviving was anomalous in such a complex process. What you're suggesting is perilously close to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy; how could that particular set of columns be expected in advance to have survived the initial collapse? The answer is that the choice was not preordained.

Dave

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 09:23 AM

Where did I say 414MJ again? Typo?

In your analysis refuting Ross. It's the combined elastic and plastic strain energy for the lower floor, adjusted for strain rate. But you used a larger cross-sectional area so it should be somewhat less.

Newtons Bit

15th January 2008, 09:32 AM

In your analysis refuting Ross. It's the combined elastic and plastic strain energy for the lower floor, adjusted for strain rate. But you used a larger cross-sectional area so it should be somewhat less.

What? How dare you use my own work against me! :D:D:D

I may have comments about this later.

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 10:00 AM

Non-evidence but clearly the natural Achille's Heel within the buildings.

Both the CD and nonCD viewpoints MUST see the weld planes as the point of fracture because there is clear and overwhelming forensic photographic evidence for this.

Your point about not being able to distinguish between the 2 by looking at the welds surfaces themselves captures the essence of the argument well.

From the CD planning perspective this is pure genius.

Actually, charge placement is will utilize elevator shafts. The chief targets will be the 500 and 1000 columns. These are the most accessible through elevator shafts.

I did realize that even though people were unable to notice that the "hinges" were welds and they are separated by 38 feet, more or less, as soon as I pointed it out it would be received as further evidence towards a gravity driven collapse.

But don't we all want to know the TRUE mechanism of collapse? And isn't this information vital to that purpose?

If a person is able to think " few moves ahead", after the knee-jerk mental reaction they will realize that weld plane failure and 47 very straight 38 foot long columns all welded at the exact same elevations are not necessarily consistent with gravity collapse.

In my last point about the flashes, I was just passing the idea that the devices don't have to be that powerful and will be located for the most part in elevator shafts.

Remember the "spire" argument I gave earlier? I claim the spire consists of columns from only column rows 700 and 800. You mentioned 500 and 600 are good choices, too.

Good eye. Not many people would have noticed that so quickly (meaning you skipped the other possibilities: 600, 700 ect)

The 700 and 800 columns have a unique geometrical layout and it is not difficuly to distinguish them from the 500-600 row.

I'll hold off on the argument for now, but I know that you are smart enough to know that if the spire consists of 700-800 columns only, your notion about weld failure gravity driven collapse goes right out the window.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

MT,

I think the charges would need to be even larger than cutter-charges for your proposed demolition method. Cutter-charges are placed at an angle so gravity does the rest. Just breaking the welds won't do anything. The columns would need to be displaced. Each one has at least 6 horizontal members connected to it and there is at least 2000 tons pressing down on each of the columns you are talking about. Also, they need to be displaced entirely, otherwise the ends will have a different damage pattern.

I'm not as smart as Dave, could you explain?

Major_Tom

15th January 2008, 10:45 AM

DGM

15th January 2008, 10:49 AM

Yes. The question is what would be the minimum lateral "kick" necessary to crack the weld and kick it sufficiently.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/bomb%20marks/God%20Bless2.jpg

If you use too much explosive you could get something like this:

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/bomb%20marks/AZ-TF-Pole-cam0541_z1.jpg

The column above is one of the rare columns that was actually bent along it's length.

Dave, I know these are not proof.

Don't they make you folks think a bit?
Why can't these explosives be heard?

DavidJames

15th January 2008, 11:00 AM

The column above is one of the rare columns that was actually bent along it's length.I'm curious...

How you determine that?
Do you know how many column there were?
How many of them have you seen?
How do you determine if a column was bent?

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 01:27 PM

I'm curious...

How you determine that?
Do you know how many column there were?
How many of them have you seen?
How do you determine if a column was bent?

I'm not Major Tom but:

Major Tom has collected nearly every available photo and perused them thoroughly.
# Core columns = 1800 (approx)
Hundreds. (I've looked through the whole set.)
Look at it in a photo. We are talking about obviously buckled vs appears straight.

It would be good if we had some real numbers here MT: # columns, # buckled, # photos, etc.

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 01:30 PM

What? How dare you use my own work against me! :D:D:D

I may have comments about this later.

Your comments is either that I can't read or can't add. Guilty as charged. The number should be 384 MJ.

DavidJames

15th January 2008, 01:36 PM

I'm not Major Tom but:

Major Tom has collected nearly every available photo and perused them thoroughly.
# Core columns = 1800 (approx)Thanks I figure that number would be objectively available and I will assume you are correct.
Hundreds. (I've looked through the whole set.)How do you know you are looking at unique columns and not just different views of some of them.
Look at it in a photo. We are talking about obviously buckled vs appears straight.Yes, it's obvious, but that doesn't address my question now does it. Of the "hundreds" you've seen, it's apparently been determined that most of them were not bent, how do you know they were not bent?

Of course this all leads to a bigger question of "so what?". Major Tom and Greg don't think enough columns were bent, so what? Why should I care what you think? Where is your analysis regarding how many columns should have been or not been bent along with their locations within the towers.

Major_Tom

15th January 2008, 02:56 PM

How do you know you are looking at unique columns and not just different views of some of them.

If you collect enough photos of a particular area, there is hardly an object in that area which you cannot see in multiple photos from multiple angles.

I'll use one example of a photo album that focuses only on the North Tower debris field, located at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=1&MMN_position=99:99

There are over 90 photos covering the exact same area.

After looking at so many photos of the exact same area, you really begin to know the contour of the space and the objects in it.

It would be very difficult to find any object in the field that isn't observable from multiple angles.

When you collect and look at these for a long time, when someone shows you a photo with an identifiable landmark in it you can recognize quickly where you are in the rubble.

When you suggest that simply from photos you cannot tell if a 38 foot column is bent or straight I become a bit confused. Nobody is looking for lasar accuracy.

What all this lshows me is that many people never really looked at these things.

You know that when you are talking to somebody who has a giant pimple on their face it is a bit hard not to notice. Well, the characteristic straightness of the core box columns in the rubble is something like that.

When people can't notice the pattern even after I point it out to them, I begin to wonder if they aren't a bit blind.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/north%20tower%20wtc/ground_zero_aerialb.jpg

SDC

15th January 2008, 02:59 PM

rwguinn

15th January 2008, 03:14 PM

I would doubt the entire validity of this approach -- reliance on photos, taken unsystematically by various people. It's another of these, "It looks like/ sounds like X" methods which works only in very limited ways (and this kind of historical-forensic investigation is not one of them).

Rely on the science, instead. How materials behave. Not how they look or sound.

I wonder how many of these "looks Like" adherents are willing to trust their lives to:

a fellow who "read the book and that looks like a Agaricus campestris"

Or the guy who "looks Like" a Medical Doctor

Or the snake that "Looks Like" a King Snake...

Myriad

15th January 2008, 03:15 PM

rwguinn

15th January 2008, 03:21 PM

GregoryUrich

15th January 2008, 03:51 PM

Looks like you nailed it.
Not sure where GU is coming from-though he seems to lean toward 3(b), but 3(b) is definitly where Major_tom is coming from...

I'm trying to come from a place where if a reliable explanation is provided, I will accept it. Earlier today I was at 3a.2, but right now I'm at 3a.7 (3b coming after 3a.9).

I agree with Major Tom that there is insignificant evidence of column buckling other than at welded joints. This implies a 6 story buckle (assuming 3 hinges) using less energy for deforming the columns but possibly even more energy to overcome the horizontal members, floors and floors trusses--followed by a 6 story freefall. Einsteens video analyses would have caught this by showing varying accelerations.

Apollo20

15th January 2008, 05:51 PM

rwguinn

15th January 2008, 06:57 PM

beachnut

15th January 2008, 07:55 PM

If you collect enough photos of a particular area, there is hardly an object in that area which you cannot see in multiple photos from multiple angles.

When you suggest that simply from photos you cannot tell if a 38 foot column is bent or straight I become a bit confused. Nobody is looking for lasar accuracy.

When people can't notice the pattern even after I point it out to them, I begin to wonder if they aren't a bit blind.
Blind? You used radio controlled bombs to get your twisted pattern of stupid. With zero blast effect or noise you fantasy idea fails before you start.

Now we have Major Tom with silent and no blast effect explosives!
The old 4 years too late idea was thermite, now we have radio controlled, blast less, silent explosives. It is funny watching the truther engineers trying to back in explosives.

The sad fact is you fail to realize this is how a gravity collapse looks like after a big aircraft impacts at a KE of 2,000 pound of TNT, then you have 10,000 gallons of fuel with the energy of 315 tons of TNT (for you that is 630,000 pounds of TNT!), and then the buildings fail, and the millions of pounds of the upper section fail the floors below. Yes the floors are failing due to an over weight condition, the floors fail, liberating the exterior, and the excess weight along with the KE of the mass falling destroys sections of the CORE as the mass continues to destroy floors who can not hold more the 29,000,000 pounds! With over 11 floor falling any distance, the floors below are over loaded! And the building fails (not to count that first failure mode with over 60,000,000 pounds!)

I am just talking floor loads, gee, you throw in the total weight of the top and you have way too much mass for the floor blow to take. But I do not have to destroy the building, just overloading a floor with over 29,000,000 pounds, and you have floor failure, and when that floor fails the nest one goes because there is more mass! I do not care how much mass is ejected, because all we need is the mass from the floors, the shell and CORE are not needed but can impact the floors below. Darn the core has to transit either down thought the core or through the floors.

What does the top 12 floors with shell and core weigh? 60,000,000 pounds? And one floor can hold only 29,000,000 pounds! This means all we need is the top floors to fail onto the lower floors and we have failure, who needs the whole building? If you are calculating some magical cross-sectional strength, you are making an error. Give me a simple model of collapse, per floor, and I will show you a shell being stripped and shedding steel allover, and a core being destroyed at the seams with unexpected lateral loads in excess of 145 tons of TNT KE all over the place!

What Major Tom has shown us is the KE damage from the building in the form of columns all over 19 acres of WTC complex.

We have a few irrational truther engineers calculating weight and false ideas on 9/11 trying to back in explosives, silent, then you add Major Tom blast less, and radio controls, you have a made up story!

Gravy

15th January 2008, 08:04 PM

Major Tom has collected nearly every available photo How do you know?

and perused them thoroughly.Yet he is completely unaware of all the photos that show clearly deformed core box columns, but if he were aware, he'd claim that they weren't deformed while in place, except for the columns that he wants you to believe were deformed while in place, like the two on previous pages of this thread. Raise your standards, Gregory. Major Tom is incompetent, dishonest, and immature.

Tony Szamboti

15th January 2008, 08:04 PM

A little hint for you:
One of the things budding engineers learn early is that
without post-weld heat treatment, welds tend to be the weakest part of the structure.
Go back and look at the premises leading to the 3a conclusion.

ETA: And by the way:
The welds were never intended to take ANY, repeat, ANY tension loading. None. Zilch. Nada. Zero.
What happens when you start trying to bend a large member at the root (weld)?
Amazingly enough, the outer fiber (weld) is in..
....are you ready?...
wait for it......

YES!!! We have Tension!

The welds did have some strength. We looked at this in another thread and it appears they had at least 50% of the strength of the column in bending. The weld retains much of the moment of inertia of the column and the E70 weld metal is stronger than the A36 parent material.

Gravy

15th January 2008, 08:11 PM

If you collect enough photos of a particular area, there is hardly an object in that area which you cannot see in multiple photos from multiple angles.

I'll use one example of a photo album that focuses only on the North Tower debris field, located at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=1&MMN_position=99:99

There are over 90 photos covering the exact same area.

Go right ahead, Major Tom: tell us which of those columns is undeformed, and what criteria you use to make that judgment. I await your reply.

Gravy

15th January 2008, 08:21 PM

Is there any other support for the hypothesis that gravity driven collapse would continue all the way to the ground?How do you disagree with NIST's simple explanation in its December FAQ?

Gravy

15th January 2008, 08:26 PM

rwguinn

15th January 2008, 08:59 PM

The welds did have some strength. We looked at this in another thread and it appears they had at least 50% of the strength of the column in bending. The weld retains much of the moment of inertia of the column and the E70 weld metal is stronger than the A36 parent material.

"The weld" is not just the filler material
There is an area outside the actual weld, called the "Heat Affected Zone" where the cracks will actually start, which is more brittle, and weaker.
It ain't bending--its local effects--like outer fiber tension--a load path and condition that was never intended, never designed for, and likely, fatal.
A crack starts in the outer fiber, further weakening the beam (column), increasing the stress, enlarging the crack, further reducing area, increasing local stress, causing the crack to grow, reducing the area, increasing stress, causing the crack to grow----do you need more, mr "engineer"?

Tony Szamboti

15th January 2008, 08:59 PM

How do you disagree with NIST's simple explanation in its December FAQ?

In the December 2007 FAQ NIST claims a dynamic amplification of 2.0 due to sudden loading, which is a maximum for sudden loading. One problem with that is that with Greg Urich's mass analysis and the core columns cross section being known it shows that the central core had a factor of safety of 3.0 and the perimeter a factor of safety of 5.0, when considering gravity loads only.

Major_Tom

15th January 2008, 09:06 PM

The gist of the argument seems to be:

1. A vastly simplified model, designed to be conservative against sustained collapse, assumes that lots of the potential energy released in the collapse will be absorbed by the formation of multiple sharp inelastic bends in the columns before they fracture.

2. The actual columns in the rubble don't exhibit these sharp bends; instead, the columns (though careful measurement revealed that most were bent to some degree) snapped at the welds.

Therefore,

3a. The model is too conservative against collapse because clearly the formation of multiple sharp inelastic bends in the columns did not occur and therefore could not have absorbed large amounts of energy, leaving even more energy to sustain collapse than the analysis based on the simplified model suggests.

or

3b. Collapse from gravity alone could not have occurred.

... and the argument is whether 3a or 3b is the conclusion that should be drawn.

Does that about sum it up? Or am I missing something?

Missing something. I don't even recognize the argument you attribute to me.

A 1-D model is hardly a conservative estimate against sustained collapse. I am not a part of the Bazant refutation. That is Gurich. To me the original premises within the model are a joke (12.5 foot freefall, solid upper block, simultaneous and instantaneous failure of groups of columns, ect...) whereas Gurich tentatively accepts the initial assumptions and initial conditions and argues from there.

In 3 dimensions objects can miss each other completely. In 1-D things just keep making contact. But I am not interested in the Bazant analysis. It's a cartoon.

For the present purposes I'd simply be content with the present audience (Gravy excluded) accepting that forensic evidence strongly suggests that "weld failure" was the chief failure mechanism within the core. That results from the following 2 verifiable facts:

1) The large, large majority of core box columns within the rubble are remarkably straight.

2) The large, large majority of core box columns within the rubble have squared-off ends, meaning they had pretty clean breaks along their original weld surfaces.

Like a giant pimple on ones nose, the core box columns and the pre-fab perimeter sections are the 2 main objects that stand out in the rubble. You cannot miss them. Photo after photo after photo have the same patterns and you really would have to be blind not to see it.

After most of you agree on this I'll show you a more accurate model of the core (3-D this time) which will show how weld failure as a collapse mechanism of the core is inconsistent with gravity driven collapse.

How will I do this? A model based on weld failure with remarkably straight columns will basically result in a CD and a gravity-driven collapse theory which looks like this:

1) Gravity-driven (chaotic) weld failure.

2) CD: "Assisted" weld failure. This means timed and coordinated weld failure. I will show that the symmetry and timing of the failures suggests human (or divine) intervention (human in this case).

I'll show you that the "squibs" or "pressure pulses" correspond very well to the geometry of the core and individual weld locations and that the suggestion that collapsing floors cannot be the cause (note that columns crashing through floors, which is a necessary feature of a gravity-driven collapse involving weld failure with remarkably straight columns (spearing) already rules out that these "near hermetically sealed" floors could build up pressure).

And then, after you folks convince yourselves that these welds were pretty weak anyway, we can focus on the nearly 60 floor "spire" of the North Tower (both towers had spires), which were unsupported columns taller than the entire WTC 7 building. We can also look at the many, many welds that didn't break even after the collisions they must have experienced and after crashing to the ground.

For example, rwguinn, in the satellite photo I posted before, do many of these straight lines look like they are 38 feet long to you?

Every one of those longer columns in the photo are multiple column sections held together by welds.

You would never know a weld is there because there is no bending whatsoever at the weld location.

Any core box column you see in the rubble longer that 38 feet (more or less) you will find to be multiples of 38 feet (more or less).

And then we can identify the actual core columns which made up the North Tower spire. That is very interesting.

But if we can't get past "gee wiz, are those things really straight?", the rest won't make much sense to you.

rwguinn

15th January 2008, 09:08 PM

Tony Szamboti

15th January 2008, 09:28 PM

"The weld" is not just the filler material
There is an area outside the actual weld, called the "Heat Affected Zone" where the cracks will actually start, which is more brittle, and weaker.
It ain't bending--its local effects--like outer fiber tension--a load path and condition that was never intended, never designed for, and likely, fatal.
A crack starts in the outer fiber, further weakening the beam (column), increasing the stress, enlarging the crack, further reducing area, increasing local stress, causing the crack to grow, reducing the area, increasing stress, causing the crack to grow----do you need more, mr "engineer"?

You are right that the welded area includes the Heat Affected Zone which would have been in the A36 material not the weld material. It sounds like you are saying there were residual tensile stress induced cracks in the Heat Affected Zone.

Do you believe there were cracks in it then? It sounds like you are saying that and that these cracks grew and weakened the columns, so that they were already weak by Sept. 11, 2001. If so, why would these cracks grow?

If there were residual tensile stress cracks in the Heat Affected Zone they would have been very minute as this area would have been inspected when the welds were inspected. Cracks starting in outer fibers are usually due to tensile stresses from bending loads. However, even if there were some from heat and cooling induced stresses, which weren't caught during inspection, cracks only grow when there are a number of stress cycles. When would these tensile stress cycles have occurred?

Tony Szamboti

15th January 2008, 09:32 PM

Both of which are ludicrous.

Can you support that statement? I can support these factors of safety. We have the information.

beachnut

15th January 2008, 09:36 PM

Newtons Bit

15th January 2008, 10:07 PM

Gravy

15th January 2008, 10:14 PM

In the December 2007 FAQ NIST claims a dynamic amplification of 2.0 due to sudden loading, which is a maximum for sudden loading. One problem with that is that with Greg Urich's mass analysis and the core columns cross section being known it shows that the central core had a factor of safety of 3.0 and the perimeter a factor of safety of 5.0, when considering gravity loads only.My question was for Gregory, but since you have your own answer, please show your math. Oh, and remember how in your ridiculous paper you calculated a safety factor for the exterior columns at the base of the building and assumed the same factor for the columns in the collapse initiation area? Don't do that again. And when discussing safety factors be sure to differentiate between static and dynamic loads.

Off topic, but how are you coming along with proving the single biggest specific claim the "truth" movement's come up with: your claim that on a business show Larry Silverstein said WTC 7 was demolished for safety reasons? Should I start another thread so you can fill us in on your progress with this amazing sure-to-win-a-Pulitzer story?

Newtons Bit

15th January 2008, 10:25 PM

I'm trying to come from a place where if a reliable explanation is provided, I will accept it. Earlier today I was at 3a.2, but right now I'm at 3a.7 (3b coming after 3a.9).

I agree with Major Tom that there is insignificant evidence of column buckling other than at welded joints. This implies a 6 story buckle (assuming 3 hinges) using less energy for deforming the columns but possibly even more energy to overcome the horizontal members, floors and floors trusses--followed by a 6 story freefall. Einsteens video analyses would have caught this by showing varying accelerations.

I think you're not completely understanding the problem at hand. Imagine for a moment a 3-story section of exterior column just below where the collapse initiates. The top block impacts the top part of this 3-story column and delivers an overload ratio of say 1.0. The maximum force applied anywhere in this column will be at the bottom, oddly enough where the splice is. This is because each floor is adding to the force applied to the column.

But we really need to step back and look at what "buckling" really is. It's not some arcane inexplainable thing, it involves this (note, you can take Pu2*e to be equal to Mu, or the moment demand):
http://bp2.blogger.com/_-e0bzNzFdXc/Ro1OaCyj9AI/AAAAAAAAAJE/HOAVDsug5tk/s400/image010.gif

The closer a column gets to it's predicted maximum axial capacity, the larger the effect of the bending moments in the columns get. By default, even with an axial only impact, there are bending moments in the columns. This is due to two things: the columns are part of the lateral resisting system which resists wind forces (even minor ones) through bending moments, and the floor truss to column connections are eccentric.

If the moment in the column is great enough, the moment will be magnified and destroy the column splices in the exterior columns. These splices were bolted and had less capacity than the column itself. We would expect to see them fail even with little permanent deflection in the column itself.

The core columns are similar, but of course unique in their own way which you're familiar with. I imagine that they failed due to non-axial strikes from the upper block (which is probably how most of the exterior columns failed as well).

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 01:17 AM

How do you know?

Yet he is completely unaware of all the photos that show clearly deformed core box columns, but if he were aware, he'd claim that they weren't deformed while in place, except for the columns that he wants you to believe were deformed while in place, like the two on previous pages of this thread. Raise your standards, Gregory. Major Tom is incompetent, dishonest, and immature.

I looked through the photos myself Gravy. A column that failed in buckling mode is obvious in the pictures so slightly bent is not all that interesting. The great majority in his collection appear perfectly straight. I have also been through Meyerowitz's book and other collections online. Same conclusion.

Are your photos showing bending representative? Are they a scientific sample?

The high-res satellite shot is representative at least and there is no exclusion based on the sample method but rather the level reached during cleanup.

MT has said he has tried to collect as many photos as he could. We will see if MT is dishonest if he fails to include your photos.

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 01:33 AM

But Greg's paper is a peer-reviewed paper as part of the Journal of 911 Studies! Shouldn't you be taking his results as fact?

My mass paper has also been scrutinized here and no significant omissions or mistakes have been pointed out. Please, if there are mistakes let me know.

If the journal is the issue, please point out another journal which would publish a 43 page article with a calculation spreadsheet that is 3 pages wide.:jaw-dropp

Arus808

16th January 2008, 02:27 AM

sorry, to derail, but christophera is using Bazant's paper, to prove his claims. ... back to the thread

Dave Rogers

16th January 2008, 03:32 AM

A 1-D model is hardly a conservative estimate against sustained collapse. I am not a part of the Bazant refutation. That is Gurich. To me the original premises within the model are a joke (12.5 foot freefall, solid upper block, simultaneous and instantaneous failure of groups of columns, ect...) whereas Gurich tentatively accepts the initial assumptions and initial conditions and argues from there.

In 3 dimensions objects can miss each other completely. In 1-D things just keep making contact.

Which, however much you choose to keep denying it, is exactly why the Bazant model is highly conservative. Bazant assumes that the upper columns impact axially on the lower columns, i.e. in the direction in which they are able to resist collapse most effectively. A more realistic model would include impacts between columns and floor slabs (because of the upper core columns missing the lower core columns), which would overload the floor slabs very easily, resulting in progressive floor collapse ahead of the column collapse. A more realistic model would include eccentric impacts (because of the upper perimeter column trees not being coplanar than the lower perimeter column trees), which would cause columns to fail in bending with much less resistance than axial impacts. A more realistic model would consider the fact that unsupported columns, after the floor collapse zone has passed, would not in fact need any further energy input to collapse, as they would be too slender to bear their own weight. And a more realistic model would include multifloor buckles in the columns which, after the floor collapse zone has passed, have no lateral bracing and cannot therefore be regarded as restrained at every floor. All these considerations reduce the energy requirement for collapse. You have yet to come up with any argument as to why a more complete model might increase the energy requirement; any suggestions?

Dave

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 04:18 AM

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 04:26 AM

A little hint for you:
One of the things budding engineers learn early is that
without post-weld heat treatment, welds tend to be the weakest part of the structure.
Go back and look at the premises leading to the 3a conclusion.

ETA: And by the way:
The welds were never intended to take ANY, repeat, ANY tension loading. None. Zilch. Nada. Zero.
What happens when you start trying to bend a large member at the root (weld)?
Amazingly enough, the outer fiber (weld) is in..
....are you ready?...
wait for it......

YES!!! We have Tension!

Are you talking about the horizontal members? From the evidence available, most horizontal members failed not at the connections but in the member itself.

Heiwa

16th January 2008, 04:52 AM

Gregory Urich:

The first five impacts of a momentum transfer model of the collapse of WTC 1 takes only about 2.5 seconds. In this time interval the building is calculated to have dropped by about 16 meters. This time is confirmed by observation: The upper section of WTC 1 has been measured to drop ~ 18 meters in 2.5 seconds. The velocity at this point is about 16 m/s and the acceleration is thus about 6 m/s^2. To now expect to see changes in this acceleration in a 2.5 second time interval is not realistic or feasible.

In order for five impacts to take place - five floors must first be disconnected from the columns and then the columns buckle over a distance of six floors.

Evidently we do not see the walls buckle outwards (?) but let's assume it.

The first impact is the first floor above (2000 tons falling 3.7 m) is 23 kWh and is no problem. The next is the second floor above (another 2000 tons falling 7.4 m) is 46 kWh a fraction of a second later. No problem. The third, fourth and fifth floor impacts contribute 69, 92 and 115 kWh and should not be a problem either. The structure below can easily absorb these energy impacts when the are separate over 2.5 seconds. Now five floors (10 000 tons) are stacked on top of the 'impact' floor and in theory it should hold it.

At this time 22 meters of walls should have dropped down beside the building.

And no collapse of the structure below has started.

And then comes the rest of the top part (23 000 tons) and lands on the five floors that pancaked. Another impact! But is this what we see on the real time forensic evidence = the videos? Evidently not.

And now the collapse of the first floor below the impact floor should start.

Norseman

16th January 2008, 06:42 AM

In order for five impacts to take place - five floors must first be disconnected from the columns and then the columns buckle over a distance of six floors.

Evidently we do not see the walls buckle outwards (?) but let's assume it.

The first impact is the first floor above (2000 tons falling 3.7 m) is 23 kWh and is no problem. The next is the second floor above (another 2000 tons falling 7.4 m) is 46 kWh a fraction of a second later. No problem. The third, fourth and fifth floor impacts contribute 69, 92 and 115 kWh and should not be a problem either. The structure below can easily absorb these energy impacts when the are separate over 2.5 seconds. Now five floors (10 000 tons) are stacked on top of the 'impact' floor and in theory it should hold it.

At this time 22 meters of walls should have dropped down beside the building.

And no collapse of the structure below has started.

And then comes the rest of the top part (23 000 tons) and lands on the five floors that pancaked. Another impact! But is this what we see on the real time forensic evidence = the videos? Evidently not.

And now the collapse of the first floor below the impact floor should start.

Wrong, the whole upper block moved as one block after the heat weakened columns in the area of floor 98 failed under the gravity load. It was funneled into the lower block at collapse initiation. The upper block then impacted the floors inside the lower block one after the other while accelerating. That would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc down to bottom. In videos of the WTC 1 collapse you can se parts of the exterior walls of the lower block still standing for a moment or pivoting out of the dust cloud after the upper block has passed. This is also visible in the WTC 2 videos.

WTC 1. Keep an eye on the west face of the lower block (right hand side) in this one. A part of the exterior wall is still visibly standing after the upper block has passed:
nDGCFDoMmuA

WTC 1. Notice an exterior panel from the north face of the lower block pivoting out of the dust cloud after the upper block has passed:
15MtxX1yjGA&feature

WTC 1. Notice the enormous part of the west face exterior wall falling towards the world financial center at the end:
ycP4HTEJXWw

Tony Szamboti

16th January 2008, 07:17 AM

My question was for Gregory, but since you have your own answer, please show your math. Oh, and remember how in your ridiculous paper you calculated a safety factor for the exterior columns at the base of the building and assumed the same factor for the columns in the collapse initiation area? Don't do that again. And when discussing safety factors be sure to differentiate between static and dynamic loads.

Off topic, but how are you coming along with proving the single biggest specific claim the "truth" movement's come up with: your claim that on a business show Larry Silverstein said WTC 7 was demolished for safety reasons? Should I start another thread so you can fill us in on your progress with this amazing sure-to-win-a-Pulitzer story?

Greg's substantiated mass is what I used to determine these factors of safety. I haven't published it yet. I did differentiate between a dynamic and static load on my post above as this is the first time NIST discussed a dynamic load. Why do you think I mentioned NIST's sudden loading amplification factor above? I guess you didn't understand. In my paper I reduced the previously estimated factors of safety for damage if you recall. After doing that there was still a substantial factor of safety remaining (it turns out there was even more than I originally estimated with the purported 500,000 ton mass) and there is no evidence of high enough steel temperatures to cause failure of the remaining structure. Without better information it is not a poor assumption that the factor of safety was somewhat constant throughout the height of the building. We have better information now and that assumption turns out to be true. The gist of my paper is that there was no basis for the columns failing. Amazing how you feel entitled to call something ridiculous when it is apparent that you don't understand.

As for Silverstein's comment on that History Channel show, I showed proof here that he was on that show. I called to get a tape. It isn't available. That is all I can do. Have you tried to get a copy of the show? I have asked you that several times and not gotten a reply so I doubt it. You just want to call me a liar with no basis for it. I do not like to call people liars, without a basis, but I have a basis for calling you one in this situation.

At least with me it seems that when you can't forcibly argue the facts you delve into nebulous areas with attempts to smear and it is obvious. What a shame.

Tony Szamboti

16th January 2008, 07:35 AM

But Greg's paper is a peer-reviewed paper as part of the Journal of 911 Studies! Shouldn't you be taking his results as fact?

Greg's paper and the NIST SAP2000 data for the core column cross sectional areas is what I am using to determine the factors of safety. Greg was able to determine the perimeter column weight for each floor so knowing the height per floor and number of columns, an approximate cross section can be determined there also, since we don't have the perimeter cross sections from NIST. It turns out with the substantiated mass and these cross sections that the core had a factor of safety of 3.00 to 1 and the perimeter a factor of safety of 5.00 to 1, when considering gravity loads only.

I will be revising my paper to show these now substantiatable factors of safety. Using the erroneously purported 500,000 ton mass and estimating cross sections from Engineering News Record articles I had previously estimated the factors of safety as 1.67 to 1 for the core and and 5.00 to 1 for the perimeter wall.

SDC

16th January 2008, 07:50 AM

I looked through the photos myself Gravy. A column that failed in buckling mode is obvious in the pictures so slightly bent is not all that interesting. The great majority in his collection appear perfectly straight. I have also been through Meyerowitz's book and other collections online. Same conclusion.

Are your photos showing bending representative? Are they a scientific sample?

The high-res satellite shot is representative at least and there is no exclusion based on the sample method but rather the level reached during cleanup.

MT has said he has tried to collect as many photos as he could. We will see if MT is dishonest if he fails to include your photos.

Jumping back a little here... Mr/ Dr (whatever) Urich, do you maintain it is acceptable procedure to say "well, some of the photos look like such-and-such"? In the same discussion as highly technical engineering data and calculations?

I suspect apples and oranges. The one, very impressionistic piece of information (I don't say evidence) is used to support and extend actual technical calculations.

Guys, I'm from the humanities. In my research I would be extremely careful about mixing this way. Has it now become the norm in engineering?

Major_Tom

16th January 2008, 08:19 AM

Gravy says:

Yet he is completely unaware of all the photos that show clearly deformed core box columns,

I keep a separate photo album of all core box columns I encounter that show bending and distortions at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=3

If you have photos of damaged core box columns that are not in the album, please let us all know.

But if you don't show any, then your veil is wearing thin, even to those who support your other conclusions.

We will see if MT is dishonest if he fails to include your photos.

More photos the better. Just let me know how I can obtain them.

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 09:35 AM

Jumping back a little here... Mr/ Dr (whatever) Urich, do you maintain it is acceptable procedure to say "well, some of the photos look like such-and-such"? In the same discussion as highly technical engineering data and calculations?

I suspect apples and oranges. The one, very impressionistic piece of information (I don't say evidence) is used to support and extend actual technical calculations.

Guys, I'm from the humanities. In my research I would be extremely careful about mixing this way. Has it now become the norm in engineering?

I've suggested myself that it would be good if Major Tom could generate some statistics to which I would add documenting his method. I won't do it myself because I don't have time and I have been through enough photos (100s if not 1000) to form an opinion. Even if there was as many as 10% buckled columns (there aren't) it still shows that columns didn't buckle on a floor by floor basis. This is useful information.

Heiwa

16th January 2008, 10:33 AM

Wrong, the whole upper block moved as one block after the heat weakened columns in the area of floor 98 failed under the gravity load. It was funneled into the lower block at collapse initiation. The upper block then impacted the floors inside the lower block one after the other while accelerating. That would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc down to bottom. In videos of the WTC 1 collapse you can se parts of the exterior walls of the lower block still standing for a moment or pivoting out of the dust cloud after the upper block has passed.

Sorry - I cannot see that the whole upper block moves as one block.

Particularly not after the heat allegedly weakened columns in the area of floor 98.

Where does upper block impact? At floor 98? How much did it fall prior impact? One floor? 3.7 meters?

What happened to the columns between floor 98 and floor 99? Where did they disappear when they buckled?

At floor 98, which is above the center of impact which was at floor 94-96 in North wall, all columns - core and walls - are 100% intact after impact and just prior collapse.

Videos show clearly that the fuel at impact burnt for only 15 seconds in a big fire ball. After that there were only small fires ... and not a big one at floor 98.

The compressive stresses in the columns just prior collapse are very small! Less than 30% of the yield/buckling stress. The columns are spread out on an area of 4000 m² - the windows are all open - smoke escapes and cool air is sucked in. It is not very hot up there - particularly not at the outside walls that carry most of the gravity load - 65% according NIST.

NIST suggests the core sags down first because some core columns at floors 95-96 may be damaged but it does not cause an impact.

I can simply not understand why all 236 wall and 47 solid core columns would collapse simultaneously at floor 98 - particularly when it is not seen on any videos. With so low compressive stresses!

I see in slow motion the roof moving down when the low stressed wall columns at floor 98 are still intact.

Does anybody say that the core collapsed before the walls?

NIST says that the core was unloaded 20% before collapse because of some load transfer.

But still the compressive stresses in the columns were very small, no floors had disconnected from the columns so the horizontal supports were mainly intact.

Under those circumstances no column can buckle. And I see no columns buckle.

And if no columns buckle there can be no falling down or impact of a block falling down on structure below.

Quite simple actually. What you see on the videos is not a block falling down followed by an impact.

Major_Tom

16th January 2008, 11:27 AM

So the idea is that 38 foot columns form a 3 point buckle only along 12 feet of the length.

I have never seen a single column that has that appearance.

The Bazant model suggests that 50%+ of the columns exhibit this behavior.

Since this paper was formulated only 3 days after the event, before the clean-up even began, don't you think that the investigators would look for some of the columns that were so severely damaged?

After 6 years, can anyone show me just 2 of the 50%+ core columns that show this damage pattern?

Please show me just two 3 point buckes on damaged core columns in the rubble.

You have almost nothing in the rubble that supports the initial assumtions on the Bazant model.

50%+ instantaneous and simultaneous failure and you can't show me an example?

In the model, collapse initiation is the biggest mystery. Collapse initiation has always been the biggest mystery.

And yet the investigative bodies simply overlook collecting damaged columns from these areas of the buildings?

Arus808

16th January 2008, 11:28 AM

major tom, why dont you file a FoIFA request so that you can go down the to the FRESH KILLS dump and find out for yourself?

rwguinn

16th January 2008, 01:40 PM

Can you support that statement? I can support these factors of safety. We have the information.
Nonsense.
You are looking at components of a system, saying "look! this is piece by itself is stronger than the system as a whole is defined, therefore the system is greater than advertised".
To say"The core has a SF of 3 and the perimeter has a SF of 5" is simply fuzzy thinking. It is the system that we are worried about.
And when beams (a generic term) take loads they are not designed for, the interface that it has with the rest of the structure is going to die!
No part of a column in the Tower never, under any normal circmstances, saw a tension load before 9/11.That is because they were never put in bending, until normal load paths disappeared, and suddenly an individual beam is being forced to bend. Even though the total load is compressive, the outer fibers of the joint are now in tension within the single beam, and loading fails the joint-before the actual beam can buckle.
This usually is accompanied by a loud "Snap" or "Clang", and collapse. There is little if any time delay between load onset and the "snap"

Norseman

16th January 2008, 02:42 PM

Sorry - I cannot see that the whole upper block moves as one block.

Gravy made this video especially for you and your denial of the realities of the WTC 1 collapse:
Cz6VxxVdXuA

Particularly not after the heat allegedly weakened columns in the area of floor 98.

Where does upper block impact? At floor 98? How much did it fall prior impact? One floor? 3.7 meters?

What happened to the columns between floor 98 and floor 99? Where did they disappear when they buckled?

At floor 98, which is above the center of impact which was at floor 94-96 in North wall, all columns - core and walls - are 100% intact after impact and just prior collapse.

The columns initially stayed attached to the upper and lower block respectively when they buckled and broke off from each other.

Here especially for you column 210 from the area of floor 98 in WTC 1, one of the samples that were saved for further study in the clean up process:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478e61f7f03e7.jpg

It looks a little bit overloaded, doesn't it. You can read more about this column in NIST NCSTAR 1-3C and 1-3.

Videos show clearly that the fuel at impact burnt for only 15 seconds in a big fire ball. After that there were only small fires ... and not a big one at floor 98.

The compressive stresses in the columns just prior collapse are very small! Less than 30% of the yield/buckling stress. The columns are spread out on an area of 4000 m² - the windows are all open - smoke escapes and cool air is sucked in. It is not very hot up there - particularly not at the outside walls that carry most of the gravity load - 65% according NIST.

You have been shown this photo before Heiwa:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/8790477b82f38893b.jpg

Do you call this a small fire. The fires on the upper floors of WTC 1 and 2 were so big that it was beyond any fire department in the world to put them out. Even with the elevators working and water available it would haven impossible to put out does fires. You are looking at a picture of several 4000 m2 floors burning.

NIST suggests the core sags down first because some core columns at floors 95-96 may be damaged but it does not cause an impact.

I can simply not understand why all 236 wall and 47 solid core columns would collapse simultaneously at floor 98 - particularly when it is not seen on any videos. With so low compressive stresses!

I see in slow motion the roof moving down when the low stressed wall columns at floor 98 are still intact.

Once again the collapse initiated on the south side, the side with that big fire and those inward bowing exterior columns in the picture above. When those columns failed the loads were transfered to the next column on the east and west side, which then failed and so on to the north side. This concept is not exactly rocket science Heiwa.

These are facts that have been pointed out to you repeatedly by both me and other posters on this forum.

Goodbye!

GregoryUrich

16th January 2008, 04:14 PM

Nonsense.
You are looking at components of a system, saying "look! this is piece by itself is stronger than the system as a whole is defined, therefore the system is greater than advertised".
To say"The core has a SF of 3 and the perimeter has a SF of 5" is simply fuzzy thinking. It is the system that we are worried about.
And when beams (a generic term) take loads they are not designed for, the interface that it has with the rest of the structure is going to die!
No part of a column in the Tower never, under any normal circmstances, saw a tension load before 9/11.That is because they were never put in bending, until normal load paths disappeared, and suddenly an individual beam is being forced to bend. Even though the total load is compressive, the outer fibers of the joint are now in tension within the single beam, and loading fails the joint-before the actual beam can buckle.
This usually is accompanied by a loud "Snap" or "Clang", and collapse. There is little if any time delay between load onset and the "snap"

So the Tower never swayed in the wind...or did it do that independently of the core?

Newtons Bit

16th January 2008, 04:17 PM

So the Tower never swayed in the wind...or did it do that independently of the core?

I think he's talking about beam elements and core columns. I think...

Major_Tom

16th January 2008, 04:48 PM

When discussing the collapse initiation of WTC 2, einstein noted:

Dave, did you notice those rows of squibs, the distance between them is not exactly the distance of a story, but much more, I've noticed that also for a couple of other movies that I synchronized in time. This is a big contradiction for the theory that these are caused by falling floors. The same appears at the other side of the building in spite of the fact that the block topples, the floors cannot enclose the amount of air. The first row is above the mechanical floors, the 2nd is in the mechanical floors and the third below. There are a couple of other things also that doesn't fit the official story.

From the point of view of the CD idea of attacking the weld locations this is what we would expect to see.

The following images map the first two strong "dust" ejections as being separated by 3 floors. The welds in this location are also separated by 3 floors.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/WTC2_3floors.jpg

The video clip from which this was taken is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COpfvXj_BVo

The largest initial ejections being separated by 3 floors is what a person would expect from attacks accross the first 2 weld planes.

Please recall that all 47 core columns have their welds at the exact same elevations, separated by about 38 feet.

Therefore a simultaneous attack on the 500 column row accross one weld plane followed by a second simultaneous attack on the next lower weld plane would look something like what we actually see.

Floors crushing other floors wouldn't look like this.

DGM

16th January 2008, 05:00 PM

When discussing the collapse initiation of WTC 2, einstein noted:

From the point of view of the CD idea of attacking the weld locations this is what we would expect to see.

The following images map the first two strong "dust" ejections as being separated by 3 floors. The welds in this location are also separated by 3 floors.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/WTC2_3floors.jpg

The video clip from which this was taken is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COpfvXj_BVo

The largest initial ejections being separated by 3 floors is what a person would expect from attacks accross the first 2 weld planes.

Please recall that all 47 core columns have their welds at the exact same elevations, separated by about 38 feet.

Therefore a simultaneous attack on the 500 column row accross one weld plane followed by a second simultaneous attack on the next lower weld plane would look something like what we actually see.

Floors crushing other floors wouldn't look like this.
Along with the HUGE BANG and the spray of glass that covers all of Manhattan. Any other bright ideas?

Norseman

16th January 2008, 05:19 PM

I keep a separate photo album of all core box columns I encounter that show bending and distortions at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=3

Major Tom, not a single one of all the columns in the photos you have gathered show any sign of damage by explosives whatsoever. They do only show damage that are to be expected in a gravity driven collapse like the WTC towers. Like twisting, bending, buckling etc. Here are some examples of what the forces of nature can do to steel structures.

Tornado damage:
ALL BUILDINGS, VEHICLES AND
POSSESSIONS AT THE FARM APPEARED TO BE A TOTAL LOSS. THE HOME WAS LEVELED AND SWEPT AWAY. VEHICLES WERE THROWN THROUGH THE AIR FOR SOME DISTANCE, TWISTED, AND WRAPPED AROUND TREES. METAL TRUSSES FROM OUTBUILDINGS WERE WRAPPED AROUND MACHINERY. GRAIN BINS WERE TORN APART AND PIECES LODGED AND TWISTED IN TREES.
Source (http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/severe/jul18_tor/PNSFAR)
Photo gallery showing the damage described above:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/bou/severe/jul18_tor/jul18_tor.php
Especially noteworthy photos in the gallery are the steel beam wrapped around the tractor and the steel beam beside the car. Looks familiar doesn't it? But yet no bombs, just a tornado. You would need a tremendously big bomb to replicate the damage seen in those pictures.

At this page you will find 4 photos of steel roof structures that have been destroyed by a typhoon, scroll to find them:
http://www.naga.gov.ph/tabang/category/images-typhoon-reming/

What a snow avalanche can do to a steel guardrail.
http://www.piste-off.com/equipment-and-technical/avalanche.asp
Wonder what a steel and concrete avalanche can do?

Do not underestimate the forces of nature, they are merciless masters.

Norseman

16th January 2008, 05:39 PM

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/WTC2_3floors.jpg

The video clip from which this was taken is at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COpfvXj_BVo

Floors crushing other floors wouldn't look like this.

Major_Tom thank you for illustrating so well a point I was thinking about making a post on in this thread.

Do you notice how the dust ejections are aligned with the tilt of the upper block. So what you call "Lower explosion" in the right hand picture above, is just the east exterior columns of the upper block crushing the floor spans on the east side of the lower block. As you can see in the picture the west side of the upper block has not yet arrived at that level. But the exterior columns of the upper block on the east side have. This is what I call self debunking Major Tom.

Corsair 115

16th January 2008, 05:49 PM

Floors crushing other floors wouldn't look like this.And how do you know that? What's your basis for that opinion?

Major_Tom

16th January 2008, 06:00 PM

Norseman notes:

Do you notice how the dust ejections are aligned with the tilt of the upper block. So what you call "Lower explosion" in the right hand picture above, is just the east exterior columns of the upper block crushing the floor spans on the east side of the lower block.

Crushing the floor spans? It is a good thing you folks have Dave. He at least tries to make sense.

How do I know that? If these are separated by 3 floors, there are 2 floors in between, no? Floor by floor crushing doesn't skip a few floors.

twinstead

16th January 2008, 06:03 PM

How do I know that? If these are separated by 3 floors, there are 2 floors in between, no? Floor by floor crushing doesn't skip a few floors.

You have no idea what's going on inside those buildings.

Gravy

16th January 2008, 06:33 PM

So the idea is that 38 foot columns form a 3 point buckle only along 12 feet of the length.

I have never seen a single column that has that appearance.

The Bazant model suggests that 50%+ of the columns exhibit this behavior.You have repeatedly been told that Bazant's model is a simplification that is extremely conservative in favor of no global collapse: yet in that model there is more than enough energy in the falling mass to bring the collapse to the ground.

Major Tom, is there anything about this that you do not understand? If not, then do not bring it up again. You seem to think you gain points by mindlessly repeating your favorite mantras here. That's not how learning works.

Norseman

16th January 2008, 06:56 PM

Crushing the floor spans? It is a good thing you folks have Dave. He at least tries to make sense.

How do I know that? If these are separated by 3 floors, there are 2 floors in between, no? Floor by floor crushing doesn't skip a few floors.

What else do you think should happen when the upper block is funneled inside the lower block? Are you unable to visualize the upper block as an more or less intact structure inside the lower block, destroying floors and pushing the exterior walls of the lower block outwards. Do you notice that the upper block is tilting slight to the south also. In other words the south east corner is lower than the north east corner of the upper block.

If you go back to the video you posted and watch the slow motion part of the sequence the pictures you used were taken from, you should notice how your "Lower explosion" moves in perfect alignment with the movement and tilt of the upper block. It starts at the south east corner and moves north to the north east corner. That is because the SE corner of the upper block is the first part of the upper block to break through the floor at that level.

As the floor is collapsed enormous amounts of air and dust is pushed out of the windows. You know, each floor contained nearly 15 000 cubic meters of air. That is what you see in the video.

Newtons Bit

16th January 2008, 07:02 PM

Norseman

16th January 2008, 07:41 PM

Major Tom, this is a picture of a column that survived an earthquake in japan.

http://www.daido-it.ac.jp/~doboku/miki/pic/t101.jpg
Original context with links to more pictures (http://www.daido-it.ac.jp/~doboku/miki/kobe1.html)

When the ground shook the inertia of the road structure on top of the column put a tremendous bending strain on the lower part of the column, just where the weld connection is. Compare the damage on this column to the damage on this column from the World Trade Center, that you claim shows bomb damage:

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/pagemaster/core3.jpg
Look at Example 7 for Major Tom's use of it (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=17&MMN_position=22:22) (the pictures are above the text).

Looks similar doesn't it? In fact that column of yours just shows the effect of being bent in the collapse of the WTC towers, and nothing else.

rwguinn

16th January 2008, 08:20 PM

I think he's talking about beam elements and core columns. I think...
NONE of the columns ever saw a tension load anywhere. The weight (downforce) on them was greater than any tension a wind load could develop.
Think of bolt preloading.

Newtons Bit

16th January 2008, 08:38 PM

NONE of the columns ever saw a tension load anywhere. The weight (downforce) on them was greater than any tension a wind load could develop.
Think of bolt preloading.

I dunno about that. I'm pretty sure that an analysis of P/A -Mc/I with a 0.6D + 1.0W combination (using the combinations the designers used) would likely generate tension.

Newtons Bit

16th January 2008, 08:39 PM

The following picture is a good example that shows the welds were not stronger than the member itself:

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/pagemaster/Beam_truck1.jpg

Notice how the plates have separated, this is due to the large shear flow in the welds (basically bending in that area) that exceeded the strength of the weld.

rwguinn

16th January 2008, 08:46 PM

I dunno about that. I'm pretty sure that an analysis of P/A -Mc/I with a 0.6D + 1.0W combination (using the combinations the designers used) would likely generate tension.

Somebody shows the numbers, I back down.
I'm easy that way.
Just remember, Mc/I will be for the structure. C is 100 feet, but I is really, really Big ((208^4)/12)

Norseman

16th January 2008, 08:50 PM

This quote is from Major Tom's site:

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/pagemaster/figB6.jpg
Example 9

I haven’t seen any other picture like this. There certainly seems to be a hole blown right through the steel on the long side of the box column.

The damage appears to be made by an explosive device placed about 3 feet up from the end.

Original context
(http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=17&MMN_position=22:22)
Your are aware that what you claim to be hole blown by a bomb is just the hole after a coupon removed for further metallurgic analysis. Did you notice the blackened edges, that is a sure sign that the hole was made after the column was recovered from the pile. Had it been made in the collapse it should have been rusty like the rest of the column. This type of cuts you can se in many of the pictures of steel saved for further studies by FEMA and NIST. You can read about getting coupons in this FEMA report:
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apd.pdf
And about oxygen cutting of steel here:
http://11-settembre.blogspot.com/2007/04/real-world-tests-cut-through-steel.html. And it also gives you the explanation that your article about Angle-Cut Columns (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=49&MMN_position=80:80) is missing.

But from the article I guess you know this. Great you understood that Jones thermate idea was wrong, both in the process you invented your wrong idea about how the towers collapsed instead. And of course Jones had be disinfo. But the problem you got is that you, like Steven Jones, do not know what you are talking about, that is very evident.

By the way, do you really believe that FEMA would put a picture of a column showing sure signs of bomb damage in this report:
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apd.pdf
See Figure B-6.

bje

16th January 2008, 09:25 PM

As for Silverstein's comment on that History Channel show, I showed proof here that he was on that show.

Silverstein NEVER made any such comment. Get real.

Major_Tom

16th January 2008, 11:30 PM

Norseman, That photo is a one of a kind and for that reason I don't believe in it myself.

I've never seen another like it and for that reason it is not representative of the weld attacks I am describing.

I look for patterns and this is not a pattern.

I'd appreciate further feedback on that photo from others with some technical knowledge.

So someone actually reads the material on my site. Good.

The info about Mr Jones on my site is from much personal experience in corresponding with him.

GregoryUrich

17th January 2008, 07:58 AM

You have repeatedly been told that Bazant's model is a simplification that is extremely conservative in favor of no global collapse: yet in that model there is more than enough energy in the falling mass to bring the collapse to the ground.

Major Tom, is there anything about this that you do not understand? If not, then do not bring it up again. You seem to think you gain points by mindlessly repeating your favorite mantras here. That's not how learning works.

The Bazant model has one major assumption in favor of survival of the structure:

1. Equal distribution of impact into columns.

However, there are at least 7 major assumptions in favor of collapse continuation.

1. No energy is absorbed by the upper section.
2. The falling energy is overestimated.
3. The strength of the structure is underestimated.
4. The spring constant is overestimated.
5. No energy is absorbed during elastic or plastic deformation of the initial collapse.
6. No energy is absorbed by floor flexion.
7. No energy is absorbed by plastic deformation of the floors.

When I quantify these with reasonable approximations I get an overload factor of 0.56. Thus, when you take these into account there is not enough force to overload the structure. Without quantifying these you are just taking Bazant's word that his hand waving is valid.

It may very well be that when you take uneven distribution of impact into account that global collapse is inevitable but Bazant's "simple analysis" proves nothing!

GregoryUrich

17th January 2008, 08:06 AM

This quote is from Major Tom's site:

Original context
(http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=17&MMN_position=22:22)
Your are aware that what you claim to be hole blown by a bomb is just the hole after a coupon removed for further metallurgic analysis. Did you notice the blackened edges, that is a sure sign that the hole was made after the column was recovered from the pile. Had it been made in the collapse it should have been rusty like the rest of the column. This type of cuts you can se in many of the pictures of steel saved for further studies by FEMA and NIST. You can read about getting coupons in this FEMA report:
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apd.pdf
And about oxygen cutting of steel here:
http://11-settembre.blogspot.com/2007/04/real-world-tests-cut-through-steel.html. And it also gives you the explanation that your article about Angle-Cut Columns (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=49&MMN_position=80:80) is missing.

But from the article I guess you know this. Great you understood that Jones thermate idea was wrong, both in the process you invented your wrong idea about how the towers collapsed instead. And of course Jones had be disinfo. But the problem you got is that you, like Steven Jones, do not know what you are talking about, that is very evident.

By the way, do you really believe that FEMA would put a picture of a column showing sure signs of bomb damage in this report:
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apd.pdf
See Figure B-6.

Unless you have some evidence that the photo in question is representative of a coupon cut, your statement is nothing but conjecture. Notice that the steel is deformed (inward) around the hole--definitely not a typical feature of an oxy-acetylene cut.

Furcifer

17th January 2008, 09:28 AM

I'd appreciate further feedback on that photo from others with some technical knowledge.

The edge of the hole in the column does not look like it was cut by an oxy torch. While hard to tell exactly, it appears jagged. Unless the person who cut it was very inexperienced, the hole would be more symmetrical, striated (from the cutting process as the torch blows the oxidized metal into the hole it creates) and flush to the face of the column if it were taken as a coupon. There's obvious fatigue in the metal about the hole, suggesting one of two things in my opinion. Either it was struck by another smaller piece of steel and punctured or, the more probable of the two, there was another piece of steel welded to the column in that location, which was struck at a perpendicular angle to the face of the column and pushed inward, fatiguing the metal, then it was struck again at an angle parallel to the face of the column ripping it and the weld from the already fatigued metal. This two step process is the most likely of the two as it accounts for both the inward deformation, the observed fatiguing and the jagged edge around the hole protruding outward from the face of the column.

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 09:36 AM

I am glad we have so many people participating in this discussion that know something about welds.

Consider the following images.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/photos_68_and_72.jpg

These are copies of extremely high resolution photos taken by Aman Zafar from his balcony.

If we place the images over one another and fade out the building, we discover something rather interesting.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/spire_and_building.jpg

It is easy to place one image directly over the other with precision by using the building with the dome and it's window grid.

The following graphic accurately depicts the core column locations and relative sizes of core column cross sections on the first floor of WTC 1.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/pictures%20with%20graphics-zoom/wtc%20core%20dim.jpg

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/pictures%20with%20graphics-zoom/wtc%20core%20labels.jpg

You would be looking at this graphic from the lower left side to compare it with the photos.

The closest columns seem to be 701 and 801.

Note that Dave, being highly observant, said those columns could be either from the 700, 800 rows or from the 500, 600 rows.

From the above images they certainly look like the 700, 800 rows.

What do you think?

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 09:39 AM

I'll give a close-up of those columns from the same picture to help judge.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/spire/view%202.jpg

Remember that the lateral braces are separated by 12 to 13 feet.

Newtons Bit

17th January 2008, 09:52 AM

The Bazant model has one major assumption in favor of survival of the structure:

1. Equal distribution of impact into columns.

However, there are at least 7 major assumptions in favor of collapse continuation.

1. No energy is absorbed by the upper section.
2. The falling energy is overestimated.
3. The strength of the structure is underestimated.
4. The spring constant is overestimated.
5. No energy is absorbed during elastic or plastic deformation of the initial collapse.
6. No energy is absorbed by floor flexion.
7. No energy is absorbed by plastic deformation of the floors.

When I quantify these with reasonable approximations I get an overload factor of 0.56. Thus, when you take these into account there is not enough force to overload the structure. Without quantifying these you are just taking Bazant's word that his hand waving is valid.

It may very well be that when you take uneven distribution of impact into account that global collapse is inevitable but Bazant's "simple analysis" proves nothing!

Care to quantify your quantifications?

Myriad

17th January 2008, 10:50 AM

The tangent of the quotient of the apparent (pixel) width on the photo of the tower wall on the left divided by the apparent width of the tower wall on the right gives us the angle between the photograph and the plane of the left wall of the tower. (This assumes the photo is taken from an infinite distance, so that the angle of the convergence of the sight lines to the edges of the tower can be taken as zero; given that the photo is taken from a great distance compared to the width of the tower, the angle of convergence of the sight lines is negligibly small so the assumption introduces only a very slight inaccuracy.) Measuring from the image of the intact tower, that's about 34 degrees.

The cosine of that angle, then, represents the foreshortening of distances parallel to the wall on the left. That factor is .827. That is, the apparent width of that wall is .827 of what it would be if the tower were turned, in place, so that that wall were face on.

The factor for vertical foreshortening, at the height of the close-up image, is negligible due to the distance of the camera and the elevation that the photo was taken from.

Now we can examine the leftmost columns (the highest standing framed structure) in the close-up. Knowing the floor to floor height of the towers (11.98 feet), and measuring on the close-up the spacing of the mean interval between the floors and the mean center-to-center horizontal spacing between the columns, (41 and 45 arbitrary length units, respectively; this is the least precise step in the process) and correcting for the horizontal foreshortening factor derived above, the spacing between the column centers works out to 15.9 feet.

Therefore they cannot be 700-800 row columns, and as they are too far to the left to be 900-1000 row columns, they must be 500-600 row columns.

(Measurement errors, and some vertical foreshortening that was not taken into account, no doubt accounts for why my calculated center-center column spacing is off by a few inches from the figure given for the 500-600 rows. However, even without taking the much more significant horizontal foreshortening into account, it's clear that these cannot be 700-800 row columns, because their centers, even foreshortened, are farther apart than the floor-to-floor height, but the 700-800 rows were spaced closer together than the floor-to-floor height.)

Tom, thank you for your excellent and careful work with the superimposed photographs, that allow this question to be resolved with such a high degree of certainty.

Respectfully,
Myriad

Heiwa

17th January 2008, 10:58 AM

Gravy

17th January 2008, 11:19 AM

Norseman, That photo is a one of a kind and for that reason I don't believe in it myself.Of course. That's why you wrote, "The damage appears to be made by an explosive device placed about 3 feet up from the end." :rolleyes:

What you don't know about explosives could fill a website. Oh, it already has.

Major Tom, why don't you write to the FEMA/ASCE engineers and ask them why they went through the trouble of describing and showing that column in their report but never mentioned the bomb hole right next to their camera?

Gravy

17th January 2008, 11:26 AM

From the above images they certainly look like the 700, 800 rows.

What do you think?I think you're playing games. I think you're afraid to come to the point. I think you will never present a coherent theory that accounts for the observed collapse conditions, and you will never present a shred of evidence that the buildings collapsed due to anything but damage and fire.

I think you haven't thought things through, nor do you want to.

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 12:42 PM

rwguinn

17th January 2008, 01:20 PM

I think you're playing games. I think you're afraid to come to the point. I think you will never present a coherent theory that accounts for the observed collapse conditions, and you will never present a shred of evidence that the buildings collapsed due to anything but damage and fire.

I think you haven't thought things through, nor do you want to.

There is the other problem, Gravy:
Coming to a point means you have the capability of supporting the point.
Carbon steel can be pointed very nicely.
Jello, on the other hand...

Myriad

17th January 2008, 02:16 PM

Myriad, I'll look into your claims. Thanks for the input.

I know what you mean by the rectangles. Notice that the rectangles of the column pair with the cross-bracing behind the first pair are taller than their width, while photos from other directions strongly suggest that all surviving columns are from the same 2 column rows.

I'll try to bring more data to the discussion.

Applying the same measurements and calculations to the other column pair (since they are clearly in the same plane, the same horizontal foreshortening applies), I get 10.6 feet column to column -- a match so close to the nominal spacing of the 700-800 column rows to make me certain that those columns are indeed from those rows. However, if there's another angle that shows that all the surviving columns must be from the same two rows, that would throw both my determinations into doubt, so let's check it out and see.

By the way, by "cross-bracing" do you mean the huge columns sticking at angles out of the top of the dust cloud? I've seen no evidence that any angled bracing members of that size, or any connected to, but extending beyond, the core, existed in the Towers. I rather suspect that what you're seeing there is column sections from the core above that have speared the lower core, or columns stripped of their horizontal connections and forced to the side but still momentarily attached to the standing core structures, or perhaps even columns in the act of falling (another photo from a different instant might determine the latter possibility one way or another).

Respectfully,
Myriad

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 03:41 PM

By the way, by "cross-bracing" do you mean the huge columns sticking at angles out of the top of the dust cloud?

No. Just the short horizontal members between column pairs.

I have seen no evidence of angled bracing anywhere except in the 4 corners where they had the cranes. Very short diagonal bracing which won't affect the present discussion.

We'll get to the bottom of this soon.

Note to those who were talking about how weak the welds are: These pieces were swaying unsupported and were about 40 to 50 stories high. Welds every 3 floors.

I think Realcddeal has a point.

As I mentioned before, there are many unbroken welds to be found in the rubble.

More info will be coming soon.

Myriad, for photos of the North Tower spire from 5 directions (4 of which are useful) and added graphics, please visit a photo album devoted only to this topic at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=16

DGM

17th January 2008, 03:48 PM

No. Just the short horizontal members between column pairs.

I have seen no evidence of angled bracing anywhere except in the 4 corners where they had the cranes. Very short diagonal bracing which won't affect the present discussion.

We'll get to the bottom of this soon.

Note to those who were talking about how weak the welds are: These pieces were swaying unsupported and were about 40 to 50 stories high. Welds every 3 floors.

I think Realcddeal has a point.

As I mentioned before, there are many unbroken welds to be found in the rubble.

More info will be coming soon.
With your "more info" could you please include how there could be absolutely no blast effect or any sound of explosives in the videos?

Gravy

17th January 2008, 03:54 PM

We'll get to the bottom of this soon.:dl: Stundielicious!

Note to those who were talking about how weak the welds are: These pieces were swaying unsupported and were about 40 to 50 stories high. Welds every 3 floors.Yes, as I look out my window, I see them standing defiantly!

Oh, wait....

tsig

17th January 2008, 04:09 PM

Exactly - this is what the Nist experts and highly-regarded, internationally known experts who contributed to the NIST suggest in the amazing Nist FAQ December 2007.

One (or more) floor drops down and the whole tower collapses.

The walls were just there to put windows in. And the columns had no real purpose.

Forget butterflies colliding with the towers, fires, release of potential energy, strain energy of the structure.

Beachnut, I am impressed. Your contribution here is really helpful. Like Belznut's, twinsnut's, funknut's, Davenut's, bjenut's, statenut's, 16.5nut's. Very high intellectual standard. Nutty! Now I understand why you believe planes actually hit the towers in the first place. You have watched too much television.

Do you do English?

tsig

17th January 2008, 04:19 PM

Don't need any. My facts are quite good. Maybe you need some help yourself? Too much television? Lack of sun? Drugs. Or just normal confusion?
A good medicin! Read my paper! Like thousand have. All cured.

Yep they taste great.

Norseman

17th January 2008, 04:56 PM

The edge of the hole in the column does not look like it was cut by an oxy torch. While hard to tell exactly, it appears jagged. Unless the person who cut it was very inexperienced, the hole would be more symmetrical, striated (from the cutting process as the torch blows the oxidized metal into the hole it creates) and flush to the face of the column if it were taken as a coupon. There's obvious fatigue in the metal about the hole, suggesting one of two things in my opinion. Either it was struck by another smaller piece of steel and punctured or, the more probable of the two, there was another piece of steel welded to the column in that location, which was struck at a perpendicular angle to the face of the column and pushed inward, fatiguing the metal, then it was struck again at an angle parallel to the face of the column ripping it and the weld from the already fatigued metal. This two step process is the most likely of the two as it accounts for both the inward deformation, the observed fatiguing and the jagged edge around the hole protruding outward from the face of the column.

Here is a close up of the column that I posted before. Below it is a photo from NIST NCSTAR 1-3C Figure 3-24 for comparison.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca18017ed.jpg

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca377bd53.jpg

The black edges is a tell tale sign that the cut was made after the column was recovered from the WTC pile. Otherwise it should have been rusted like the broken weld joints at the end and like the area around the cut that is missing paint. But there are some rust visible down in the left hand corner of the cut closest to the camera, indicating that the object that made the dent when the tower collapsed also cracked/ punctured the steel as you proposed. Whatever, the engineers surly removed a piece for metallurgical analyzes because of the dent. We would need a closer and sharper photo to say anything sure about striating. Anyhow parts of the NIST cut was pretty smooth.

Here are some photos of artistic cuts in WTC steel stored at Hangar 17 at the Kennedy International Airport: Photo number 16, including the next photos and the previous photos. (http://www.amny.com/entertainment/news/am-wtcrelics-pg2006,0,6613706.photogallery?index=14). Note that the edges have rusted again in these old cuts and that they are quite smooth.

And finally a picture of recyclers cutting up WTC steel at a recycling site:
http://www.americanrecycler.com/11wtc.html
Note the blackened edges of the cut.

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 05:28 PM

Your ability to see the 2 photos you posted as representing one and the same type of cut speaks for itself.

Do you really see similarities between the two "cuts"?

The reason why I would be suspicious of the photo is because it is sitting on a lawn.

This is why I prefer photos of objects unmoved from their original position at the scene of the crime.

This is why I map the debris fields at the WTC complex. Once it is moved anyone could have tampered with it for any reason.

Maybe just to fool us.

Thanks to those who communicate intelligently. If I were arguing for gravity collapse, I would find it a little embarrassing to have Gravy helping me.

Myriad

17th January 2008, 05:54 PM

No. Just the short horizontal members between column pairs.

Ok. Calling that "cross bracing" is a bit confusing because it means something else, but I understand now what you were referring to.

Note to those who were talking about how weak the welds are: These pieces were swaying unsupported and were about 40 to 50 stories high. Welds every 3 floors.

All I see in those pictures is freestanding columns unsupported for 40 or 50 feet. They were many stories off the ground but that didn't matter as long as they were attached to or lodged in the spire structure, which itself was unstable and quickly collapsed. And those unsupported columns have no load since their horizontal connections have been sheared off. (The tallest unsupported column in the spire, which is cut off at the top of the photos you posted on this thread, was taller, about 110 feet tall. But it is standing vertically, as the columns were designed to do, with no load. And it still collapsed.)

More info will be coming soon.

Looking forward to it.

Myriad, for photos of the North Tower spire from 5 directions (4 of which are useful) and added graphics, please visit a photo album devoted only to this topic at

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/index.php?module=photoalbum&PHPWS_Album_op=view&PHPWS_Album_id=16

Thanks for the photos. I can't find much value in the added graphics. There's no transparency in how the sizes and positions of the photo images relative to the graphics were determined, and how it was decided which columns to compare. Even the angles are screwy. For instance, this drawing (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/photoalbum/16/WTC1_Spire21.jpg) is captioned: "View 2 compared to column rows 600 and 700. They do not match." (I agree, they do not.) But this drawing (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/photoalbum/16/cad_view_2.jpg) labeled simply "View 2" lines the same set of columns up against the same photo as if they do match. Compare the two views. Something is wrong here. Same photo, and yet the tower is at completely different angles.

And what's up with this image (http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911/images/pagemaster/_3_pairs_for_web.jpg)? Check your view angles. If the direction of the photo is what you say it is, the column rows are running the wrong direction. The near end of the rows should be toward the left.

The multiple photos you posted here in this thread are much more useful. Using them, in a few minutes I was able to identify the column rows of two of the prominent structures, from their actual characteristics.

The analyst at the site you link to needs to start over, without the assumption that all the spire structures must come from the same column row, and without the assumption that the edges of the spire in the photos must align with the ends of one column row.

Respectfully,
Myriad

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 07:30 PM

The tallest unsupported column in the spire, which is cut off at the top of the photos you posted on this thread, was taller, about 110 feet tall.

You mean 110 feet that you can see, or from ground level?

The tallest column standing was close to 60 stories above ground level. It can be compared to building 7 in "view 4". It is clearly higher than building 7.

The tallest unsupported column in the spire, which is cut off at the top of the photos you posted on this thread, was taller, about 110 feet tall.

After 15, 20 seconds of "swaying".

The photo I posted here is of an excellent resolution. The others not so.

The only guide there is in the photos concerning alignment are the "bulges" along each column. These are floors. 12.5 feet per bulge.

They were many stories off the ground but that didn't matter as long as they were attached to or lodged in the spire structure, which itself was unstable and quickly collapsed.

There is no evidence there was any structure at all outside of what we see. Maybe they are interconnected in the smoke and dust, maybe they are not.

In view 4 the columns certainly seem to line up as pairs.

I know of no useful photos of North Tower spire. So what you see is what I have to work with.

You are right about the need for further careful review. How do you see the possibility of the first pair being 501, 601 and the connected pair behind being from the 700, 800 row? Besides the geometry of the rectangles, do you see any other clues in the alignment? That is the thing: They seem to be from the same row but the rectagles suggest otherwise. They just dont seem to have the horizontal displacement which would suggest they are 2 collumn rows away from each other.

Do you notice any clues I am overlooking? Any info you can provide in identifying individual columns will be most greatly appreciated.

And another thing: I honestly do not know to what degree the leaked blueprints can be trusted. There is one or two suspicious things about the way and the form in which they were released. For example, in their highest resolution they are still barely readable. Snuck out of a lawyers office? Already suspicious.

Norseman

17th January 2008, 07:44 PM

Applying the same measurements and calculations to the other column pair (since they are clearly in the same plane, the same horizontal foreshortening applies), I get 10.6 feet column to column -- a match so close to the nominal spacing of the 700-800 column rows to make me certain that those columns are indeed from those rows. However, if there's another angle that shows that all the surviving columns must be from the same two rows, that would throw both my determinations into doubt, so let's check it out and see.

By the way, by "cross-bracing" do you mean the huge columns sticking at angles out of the top of the dust cloud? I've seen no evidence that any angled bracing members of that size, or any connected to, but extending beyond, the core, existed in the Towers. I rather suspect that what you're seeing there is column sections from the core above that have speared the lower core, or columns stripped of their horizontal connections and forced to the side but still momentarily attached to the standing core structures, or perhaps even columns in the act of falling (another photo from a different instant might determine the latter possibility one way or another).

Respectfully,
Myriad

Myriad, here is the complete sequence of photos taken by Aman Zafar that shows the remaining WTC 1 columns. Since Aman Zafar's (http://www.amanzafar.com/WTC/index.shtm) web site is down at the moment, I am linking to the relevant pictures at the CT site 9-11 Research:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc1exp12.html

You are absolutely right, there is no doubt that the row of columns to the north are the 500-600 column rows. As should be evident from the complete sequence, the huge columns sticking at angles in the close crop photo Major Tom posted, must be freestanding columns of the 500 row collapsing. They are clearly thicker than the columns in the 700-800 row column pair standing in front of them. If we look at the architectural drawings of the floors in WTC 1 in the area of floor 40 - 50 we can see that the 500 row columns and the 1000 row columns were the thickest columns:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/plans/table.html

The 700-800 row columns were thiner, and that several of the pairs inside the core were H type columns. It is also to be noted that the 600 row and the 900 row were thiner than their partner row 500 and 1000. While the 700-800 row columns were of even size like the single freestanding pair. Therefore the single freestanding pair must be a 700-800 row pair. While the column pairs to the north of them (left) of them must be the 500-600 row.

This was just another way of looking at it, Myriad. Well spotted.

Gravy

17th January 2008, 08:50 PM

Here is a close up of the column that I posted before. Below it is a photo from NIST NCSTAR 1-3C Figure 3-24 for comparison.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca18017ed.jpg

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca377bd53.jpg

The black edges is a tell tale sign that the cut was made after the column was recovered from the WTC pile. Otherwise it should have been rusted like the broken weld joints at the end and like the area around the cut that is missing paint. But there are some rust visible down in the left hand corner of the cut closest to the camera, indicating that the object that made the dent when the tower collapsed also cracked/ punctured the steel as you proposed. Whatever, the engineers surly removed a piece for metallurgical analyzes because of the dent. We would need a closer and sharper photo to say anything sure about striating. Anyhow parts of the NIST cut was pretty smooth.

Here are some photos of artistic cuts in WTC steel stored at Hangar 17 at the Kennedy International Airport: Photo number 16, including the next photos and the previous photos. (http://www.amny.com/entertainment/news/am-wtcrelics-pg2006,0,6613706.photogallery?index=14). Note that the edges have rusted again in these old cuts and that they are quite smooth.

And finally a picture of recyclers cutting up WTC steel at a recycling site:
http://www.americanrecycler.com/11wtc.html
Note the blackened edges of the cut.Another reason they cut holes in columns was to attach crane hooks when the columns were inaccessible to the grapplers or too heavy or awkward for the grapplers to handle. That was common. Two things the hole isn't: blast damage, and a defect worthy of mention in the FEMA report.

Major_Tom

17th January 2008, 09:13 PM

Norseman, Myriad, give me 2 days to rework this. Thanks for the feedback.

Another reason they cut holes in columns was to attach crane hooks when the columns were inaccessible to the grapplers or too heavy or awkward for the grapplers to handle. That was common. Two things the hole isn't: blast damage, and a defect worthy of mention in the FEMA report.

I noticed these holes for lifting on other pieces, most always on perimeter sections. I am in no way attached to the blast idea. Makes no sense anyway. Why such a small hole to displace such a large column?

Norseman, I wasn't buying the metal sample idea. This latest explanation makes more sense. Maybe an oxy-lance hole? Not oxy-acetylene.

Myriad

17th January 2008, 11:27 PM

You mean 110 feet that you can see, or from ground level?

The tallest column standing was close to 60 stories above ground level. It can be compared to building 7 in "view 4". It is clearly higher than building 7.
...
There is no evidence there was any structure at all outside of what we see. Maybe they are interconnected in the smoke and dust, maybe they are not.

I mean 110 feet that's unsupported by any other structure, just a single column held together only by its welds. It's also many stories off the ground, but the spire that holds it up is a more complex structure.

I think it would be unwise to assume that the portions of the spires whose structure we see at the top of the dust cloud, the single columns and column pairs, continue that way (e.g. as single columns and column pairs, without interconnection) all the way to the ground. If an assumption leads to impossibility, such as the notion that 60 stories of steel column welded end to end could stand even for a moment, then it's best put aside.) Furthermore, the dynamics of the dust cloud itself suggest that the spire was tapered, and so do certain aspects of the physics of the collapse.

1. At some point, the falling upper structure probably did undergo complete "crush up" allowing the vertical core columns to begin deflecting core debris to the surrounding floor spaces.

2. The core columns were progressively stronger nearer the ground.

3. The increasing velocity of the falling floor (and deflected core) debris allowed the falling mass to sometimes cleanly shear the floor trusses from the core so rapidly that little torque was applied to the core columns in the process.

Except for #2, I can't prove any of that and only a technically infeasible complete dynamic model of the collapse could determine it for sure.

You are right about the need for further careful review. How do you see the possibility of the first pair being 501, 601 and the connected pair behind being from the 700, 800 row? Besides the geometry of the rectangles, do you see any other clues in the alignment? That is the thing: They seem to be from the same row but the rectagles suggest otherwise. They just dont seem to have the horizontal displacement which would suggest they are 2 collumn rows away from each other.

The problem is, the left to right position of a column in the image depends on its position along the building's north-south axis (that is, what column row it is in), and its position along the building's east-west axis (that is, how far down the row it is). For every foot away from the north wall a column is, its position in the image shifts right from the image position of the northwest corner by 1/207th of the apparent width of the west wall in the image. For every foot away from the west wall a column is, its position in the image shifts right by 1/207th of the apparent width of the south wall in the image. When we see a certain amount of left-right separation, we can't easily tell how much of that separation is caused by the north-south distance between column rows, and how much is caused by the east-west distance along the row.

The good news is, if we can determine what row a column pair is in (and hence its distance from the north wall) from other evidence, only one variable remains and we should be able to determine the exact columns by measurement, on the superimposed image you made, from the position of the northwest corner.

One thing that would be nice to do first is establish the image position of the geometrically "true" northwest, southwest, and southeast corners of the building, essentially "filling in" the bevels to establish a true square cross-section. Your CAD software might be useful for this. Since I didn't do that, I had to fudge the measurements a little to account for the points where the lines of the building's sides would intersect not actually existing in the images.

The results I got from doing the measurements I just described are consistent with the leftmost column pair being 502 and 602, rather than 501 and 601. This result surprised me, because the separation in front of those columns seems so clean and consistent over so many stories that I expected to find that we were looking at the northwest corner of the core. It's quite possible that accumulated inaccuracies in my measurements might have set me off a column, but right now my numbers point to 502 and 602.

By the way, this same measurement also further rules out the possibility of the leftmost pair being in the 700-800 rows. They're simply too far left, relative to the positions of the corners of the building.

If the column pair to the right is indeed from the 700-800 rows as its proportions seem to indicate, then its horizontal position in the image puts it at 60 feet farther east (down the row) from the left column pair. If the left column pair really is 502-602, then that puts us right on 706 and 805.

I'd like to see these measurements and determinations repeated independently, and more carefully, before I would place a lot of faith in those results, or expect anyone else to do so.

I honestly do not know to what degree the leaked blueprints can be trusted. There is one or two suspicious things about the way and the form in which they were released. For example, in their highest resolution they are still barely readable. Snuck out of a lawyers office? Already suspicious.

As far as I know, though, those blueprints are consistent with diagrams of the towers' column positions that were available long before the leaked blueprints appeared. Also, many people worked in those buildings. It would be difficult to fudge the core column positions significantly without shifting elevators and stairwells in ways that people familiar with the buildings would notice.

Norseman, Myriad, give me 2 days to rework this. Thanks for the feedback.

No problem. I'll be rather busy distracted myself. NFL conference championships this weekend!

Respectfully,
Myriad

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 07:11 AM

At some point, the falling upper structure probably did undergo complete "crush up" allowing the vertical core columns to begin deflecting core debris to the surrounding floor spaces.

According to the idea of column collisions first cracking the welds, the "upper block" will be the first to loose it's rigid structure. The rigid upper block is just something that Bazant had to make up.

According to the idea that welds go first, there is no rigid upper block at all. It's rigidity is as strong as it's connecting welds, nothing more.

Physically, at the moments of impact, there is no reason to favor the rigidity of the upper "block" over the lower one, and obvious reasons to favor the rigidity of the lower block over the upper one, because clearly...

The core columns were progressively stronger nearer the ground.

If the column pair to the right is indeed from the 700-800 rows as its proportions seem to indicate, then its horizontal position in the image puts it at 60 feet farther east (down the row) from the left column pair. If the left column pair really is 502-602, then that puts us right on 706 and 805.

The closest column pair cannot be columns 502 and 602. Note that near that elevation 501 is just about as wide as 601, but 502 has a very different width than 602.

That is the only point of confusion remaining for me, because the rectangles formed by the 700, 800 column pairs are unique to the entire core.

No other column pairs in the building are placed so close together, therefore they really can't be confused with anything else.

If you can help explain such a displacement then I think the riddle is for the most part solved.

3. The increasing velocity of the falling floor (and deflected core) debris allowed the falling mass to sometimes cleanly shear the floor trusses from the core so rapidly that little torque was applied to the core columns in the process.

Isn't that amazing? How the complete open office flooring was stripped right off the columns 501, 502 and 503 (or as you are saying 502, 503 and 504) while the very vulnerable columns just stay standing? Even in the visible portions we have many welds, and there is no reason to believe that the portion obscured by the dust provided a very sturdy base. When the dust cleared the only structure remaining was

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/north%20tower%20wtc/p509.jpg

I'll let you verify that 601 and 602 have very different widths but for now I'll explain as if you already have. Do you see the intact structure of the core to the left? It is easy to verify that they are columns 507, 607, 506, 606, 505, 605, 504, 604.

Here we see the remaining structure from the east.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/north%20tower%20wtc/beam%203.jpg

The first column pair is 507, 607 (506, 606?) This can be verified by noticing the location of the stairwell. Notice the extreme difference in width. The same applies to 502, 602.

We know that the spire initially survived the fall for about 10 to 20 seconds. Therefore we can expect to see the spire debris on top of the rubble.

Now let's look at where the spire base should be. There is NO TRACE of any structure that could have served as the base of the core.

I'll provide a closer view of the exact spot where we would expect to see the spire supporting structure in the next post in a few minutes.

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 07:37 AM

Here is where the base of the spire must have been.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/spire_remains.jpg

The intact structure is 504, 604 to 507, 607.

The temporary survival of the spire (and any supporting structure underneath) means we have 2 distinct "collapses": A collapse within a collapse. The second collapse would leave it's debris on the very top of the other debris and it's base elements should be viewable.

So what could have happened to the base?

Myriad, your feedback is invaluable.

Dave Rogers

18th January 2008, 07:50 AM

According to the idea of column collisions first cracking the welds, the "upper block" will be the first to loose it's rigid structure. The rigid upper block is just something that Bazant had to make up.

You're assuming a continuous taper to the columns, which wasn't actually the case. The column section changed stepwise at certain floors - I forget which, but AFAIR they were well below 97. There wasn't therefore any difference between the column profiles in the upper and lower blocks in the initial stages. That would suggest simultaneous crush up / crush down as a first approximation. For a better approximation you'd want to look at the boundary conditions for termination of the elastic shock wave at the free upper end of the upper block and the fixed lower end of the lower block; which gives higher reflection? The reflected elastic wave will contribute to the destruction of the structure fairly early on in the process.

According to the idea that welds go first, there is no rigid upper block at all. It's rigidity is as strong as it's connecting welds, nothing more.

Of collapse progressed initially by floor collapse, that doesn't matter a lot. Large sections of debris, funnelled in by the perimeter columns, would do more or less as good a job of collapsing the floors as a solid block.

We know that the spire initially survived the fall for about 10 to 20 seconds. Therefore we can expect to see the spire debris on top of the rubble.

On top, yes, but not necessarily at the centre, and not necessarily very clearly. It's known that parts of the spire toppled sideways, and they were up to about 50 storeys long. That could throw their debris quite a long way from their base.

Now let's look at where the spire base should be. There is NO TRACE of any structure that could have served as the base of the core. In fact, I don't see any trace of a protruding 501, 502, 503 at all.

That tends to suggest that they broke off very low down. If they failed in bending, that's as reasonable a place as any for them to fail. There's no reason to expect them to protrude noticeably enough that you'd expect to see them in any particular photograph.

Dave

Heiwa

18th January 2008, 11:24 AM

You have been shown this photo before Heiwa:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/8790477b82f38893b.jpg

Do you call this a small fire. The fires on the upper floors of WTC 1 and 2 were so big that it was beyond any fire department in the world to put them out. Even with the elevators working and water available it would haven impossible to put out does fires. You are looking at a picture of several 4000 m2 floors burning.

Yes, it is a very small fire in WTC1 - spread out in many separate locations and not very concentrated anywhere. No big deal. The WTC 1 fire zone structure, several floors 4000 m² large with very solid supporting columns, is much too strong to suddenly collapse.

It is basic. Read http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist.htm again.

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 11:31 AM

In so far as the second collapse, the collapse of the North Tower spire, you have no crushing. Just falling.

We see absolutely no evidence in the rubble of this spire structure simply falling and any base intact at all.

Crushing and total chaos can no longer be used as an excuse for the basically unrecognizable DECIMATION we observe.

There was a sufficeint time delay for the spire to simply collapse into RECOGNIZABLE parts.

The exact same thing happened in the South Tower. It was a 2 stage collapse.

Of collapse progressed initially by floor collapse, that doesn't matter a lot.

We can see that the large, large majority of the core columns were straight (to the naked eye, very straight) and no evidence of perimeter buckling with the rubble besides the very limited inward pulling during collapse initiation one facade of the South Tower only (they can't buckle over bolts: The bolts were staggered).

Floor by floor collapse is all you have left. A floor by floor collapse which forcefully ejects the 4 facades outwards? Only one person even bothered to explain a floor by floor collapse that ejects the perimeter facades outwards and it was a rather humorous explanation. It went something like this:

Somehow the perimeter of the upper block managed to get just inside the lower perimeter, simultaneously separating the floors from the perimeter as it falls while ejecting the facades of the lower block forcefully outwards.

You're assuming a continuous taper to the columns, which wasn't actually the case.

We are simply considering that weaker connections tend to fail first.

Nobody can show me a photo during mid-collapse in which a person can see an upper block at all. We see smoke and dust being ejected upwards and outwards during both "collapses" suggesting that your upper block had no top.

You have no evidence of an intact upper block crushing things below.

You have no evidence of continued perimeter buckling. You have almost no forensic evidence of core buckling during collapse initiation.

The postulation of a rigid upper block in either tower is an act of desperation.

We can all see the lower block of each tower being decimated systematically downwards and manifesting an extreme movement of outward energy.

Of collapse progressed initially by floor collapse, that doesn't matter a lot. Large sections of debris, funnelled in by the perimeter columns, would do more or less as good a job of collapsing the floors as a solid block.

Wouln't that pull perimeter column inward? You have no evidence of survival of the perimeter as the collapse front passes. The collapse front IS what is pushing the perimeter facades forcefully OUTWARDS.

On top, yes, but not necessarily at the centre, and not necessarily very clearly. It's known that parts of the spire toppled sideways, and they were up to about 50 storeys long. That could throw their debris quite a long way from their base.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/spire/view%205%20photo%20copy.jpg

This is the only type of sideways falling that was witnessed. The final fall of the tallest portions of the spire was straight down after a noticable time delay.

Straight down leaving no trace of a base whatsoever. Unrecognizable decimation.

Can everybody see the "gypsum dust" trailing the falling sections just along where we know weld connections to be? Why gypsum dust would accumulate only on the top (hollow) cross-sections of the columns and not along the horisontal braces is interesting.

Only just along the weld surfaces. Being conservative, I'd say you have 2 square feet maximum on which this "gypsum" could have settled.

The highest column visible is about 60 floors tall. Nothing fell over that was 50 stories high.

Any forcefullness in my reply is in no way directed against yourselves.

Thank you for you answer, Dave.

SDC

18th January 2008, 11:35 AM

MT, you appear to rely entirely on your impressionistic (if concentrated) visual examination of pictures and videos. Could you now please provide the mathematics?

I speak as someone who aced Calculus. Yep, straight 0. Zero. No correct answers for a whole quarter (10 week grading period.) Quite an achievement. Can YOU say the same?

But I still am aware that till you provide the math, all you got is pictures which can be interpreted a number of ways. Come on.

beachnut

18th January 2008, 11:39 AM

In so far as the second collapse, the collapse of the North Tower spire, you have no crushing. Just falling.

We see absolutely no evidence in the rubble of this spire structure simply falling and any base intact at all.

Crushing and total chaos can no longer be used as an excuse for the basically unrecognizable DECIMATION we observe.

There was a sufficeint time delay for the spire to simply collapse into RECOGNIZABLE parts.

The exact same thing happened in the South Tower. It was a 2 stage collapse.

We can see that the large, large majority of the core columns were straight (to the naked eye, very straight) and no evidence of perimeter buckling with the rubble besides the very limited inward pulling during collapse initiation one facade of the South Tower only (they can't buckle over bolts: The bolts were staggered).

Floor by floor collapse is all you have left. A floor by floor collapse which forcefully ejects the 4 facades outwards? Only one person even bothered to explain a floor by floor collapse that ejects the perimeter facades outwards and it was a rather humerous explanation. It went something like this:

Somehow the perimeter of the upper block managed to get just inside the lower perimeter, simultaneously separating the floors from the perimeter as it falls while ejecting the facades of the lower block forcefully.

We are simply considering that weaker connections tend to fail first.

Nobody can show me a photo during mid-collaose in which a person can see an upper block at all. We see smoke and dust being ejected upwards and outwards during both "collapses" suggesting that your upper block had no top.

You have no evidence of an intact upper block crushing things below.

You have no evidence of continued perimeter buckling. You have almost no forensic evidence of core buckling during collapse initiation.

The postulation of a rigid upper block in either tower is an act of desperation.

We can all see the lower block of each tower being decimated systematically downwards and manifesting an extreme movement of outward energy.

Wouln't that pull perimeter column inward? You have no evidence of survival of the perimeter as the collapse front passes. The collapse front IS what is pushing the perimeter facades OUTWARDS.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/spire/view%205%20photo%20copy.jpg

This is the only type of sideways falling that was witnessed. The final fall of the tallest portions of the spire were straight down after a noticable time delay.

Straight down leaving no trace of a base whatsoever. Unrecognizable decimation.

Can everybody see the "gypsum dust" trailing the falling sections just along where we know weld connections to be? why gypsum dust would accumulate only on the top (hollow) cross-sections of the columns and not along the horisontal braces is interesting.

Only just along the weld surfaces. Being conservative, I'd say you have 2 square feet maximun on which this "gypsum" could have settled.

The highest column visible is about 60 floors tall. Nothing fell over that was 50 stories high.

Any forcefullness in my reply is in no way directed against yourselves.

Thank you for you answer, Dave.
Super dumb ideas! No Maj Tom, there were no radio controlled bombs on 9/11, this is nuts since there is no KABOOM. Wrong again Maj Tom, the dust is from drywall and insulation, it is what is around the steel! 3 inches of drywall in two sheets! The dust is also, dust! The dust is also the soft insulation under the floors. You continue to post proof against your position. Good job, no one has to debunk your stuff, you do it for everyone. Your web site proves, with all the clean steel, there were no blast effects. Your web site proves with photos of mangled steel, there was only gravity effects of damage.

You are missing the big blast effects of explosives, you ideas are debunked by your own collection of photos (repeated from above)! You can not continue to present evidence that does not support you ideas without looking wrong and worse.

DGM

18th January 2008, 11:53 AM

Super dumb ideas! No Maj Tom, there were no radio controlled bombs on 9/11, this is nuts since there is no KABOOM. Wrong again Maj Tom, the dust is from drywall and insulation, it is what is around the steel! 3 inches of drywall in two sheets! The dust is also, dust! The dust is also the soft insulation under the floors. You continue to post proof against your position. Good job, no one has to debunk your stuff, you do it for everyone. Your web site proves, with all the clean steel, there were no blast effects. Your web site proves with photos of mangled steel, there was only gravity effects of damage.

You are missing the big blast effects of explosives, you ideas are debunked by your own collection of photos (repeated from above)! You can not continue to present evidence that does not support you ideas without looking wrong and worse.
Beachnut:
I'm fairly sure that Major_Tom is hearing impaired. It's the only way I can explain how he doesn't acknowledge the sounds. I think we should not fault him because it's not his fault.:boggled:

Furcifer

18th January 2008, 01:00 PM

Here is a close up of the column that I posted before. Below it is a photo from NIST NCSTAR 1-3C Figure 3-24 for comparison.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca18017ed.jpg

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/18141478fca377bd53.jpg

The black edges is a tell tale sign that the cut was made after the column was recovered from the WTC pile. Otherwise it should have been rusted like the broken weld joints at the end and like the area around the cut that is missing paint. But there are some rust visible down in the left hand corner of the cut closest to the camera, indicating that the object that made the dent when the tower collapsed also cracked/ punctured the steel as you proposed. Whatever, the engineers surly removed a piece for metallurgical analyzes because of the dent. We would need a closer and sharper photo to say anything sure about striating. Anyhow parts of the NIST cut was pretty smooth.

Here are some photos of artistic cuts in WTC steel stored at Hangar 17 at the Kennedy International Airport: Photo number 16, including the next photos and the previous photos. (http://www.amny.com/entertainment/news/am-wtcrelics-pg2006,0,6613706.photogallery?index=14). Note that the edges have rusted again in these old cuts and that they are quite smooth.

And finally a picture of recyclers cutting up WTC steel at a recycling site:
http://www.americanrecycler.com/11wtc.html
Note the blackened edges of the cut.

Initially I thought you were refering to the large dark area around the hole, not just the edge of the hole itself. If the dark around the edge of the hole isn't just a shadow I'd side with you and agree that most likely a coupon was taken. It would be an ideal spot for a sample to determine the amount of force sustained. I guess my point is no matter which way I look at it there is no possible way for an explosive charge to make that hole as it obviously sustained a great deal of force in several directions, apparent from the jagged edge. Plus the explosive force required to puncture such a small hole is staggering.

Corsair 115

18th January 2008, 01:01 PM

Yes, it is a very small fire in WTC1 - spread out in many separate locations and not very concentrated anywhere. No big deal. The juxtaposition of the above comment and the second photo in this (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3343526&postcount=326) post leads me ask: would that qualify as a Stundie?

It also suggests to me that Heiwa is seriously divorced from reality.

Newtons Bit

18th January 2008, 01:04 PM

The juxtaposition of the above comment and the second photo in this (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3343526&postcount=326) post leads me ask: would that qualify as a Stundie?

It also suggests to me that Heiwa is seriously divorced from reality.

Indeed.

pomeroo

18th January 2008, 01:20 PM

Yes, it is a very small fire in WTC1 - spread out in many separate locations and not very concentrated anywhere. No big deal. The WTC 1 fire zone structure, several floors 4000 m² large with very solid supporting columns, is much too strong to suddenly collapse.

It is basic. Read http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist.htm again.

Why do you keep linking to a worthless paper? You are demonstrably incompetent to write a paper on the collapses of the Twin Towers.

beachnut

18th January 2008, 01:40 PM

Yes, it is a very small fire in WTC1 - spread out in many separate locations and not very concentrated anywhere. No big deal. The WTC 1 fire zone structure, several floors 4000 m² large with very solid supporting columns, is much too strong to suddenly collapse.

It is basic. Read http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist.htm again.
His web site is as challenged as his ability to see the biggest office fire in the shortest time ever set in a large high rise, as a fire?~! Dumb post! From 9/11 truth member.

If this is not the biggest reason to doubt 9/11 truth, one has to be...

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 01:55 PM

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 02:06 PM

Is this a buckled column? What could have happened to it's end?

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/bomb%20marks/1391NY001_z1.jpg

Norseman

18th January 2008, 02:12 PM

Here you got two videos of a world record within the controlled demolition industry, Major Tom:
Records: At 439 ft. tall Hudson’s is the tallest building & the tallest structural steel building ever imploded. At 2.2 million square feet, Hudson's is the largest single building ever imploded.
Source (http://www.controlled-demolition.com/default.asp?reqLocId=4)

Close up
-rcctmcxGwM

From far away
khD2gZkkSu0&NR

What sound is missing from these two videos of the WTC 1 and 2 collapses:

WTC 1:
dfSAiDq15ys

WTC 2:
_cBBsg5OAqY&feature

The missing sound of detonations in the last two videos is the big show stopper for your idea of a controlled demolition of the WTC towers, Major Tom. There is no way you can get around that fact. All the videos and all the photos on your website tell us that there were no bombs. Just aircraft impact - fire - weakening - collapse and nothing else. In understand very well that it is hard to face up to this this fact in view of the effort you have put into this. You managed to debunk Steven Jones with the materiel you gathered. So way not make the logical conclusion that there was no inside job and no bombs. Your site is a great resource with some adjustments, that is the positive part of your effort.

Norseman

18th January 2008, 02:24 PM

Is this a buckled column? What could have happened to it's end?

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/bomb%20marks/1391NY001_z1.jpg

It broke off in the collapse. The welds holding the plates together were ruptured when it broke. The collapsing inside of those towers were a tremendous chaos of falling debris, that is an understatement, things got crushed, bumped, twisted, flattened etc. Who nows what happened to that column on its way down.

HawksFan

18th January 2008, 02:35 PM

Is this a buckled column? What could have happened to it's end?

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_old/Photo%20archives/bomb%20marks/1391NY001_z1.jpg

Umm...several hundred thousand tons of building fell on it?

HawksFan

18th January 2008, 02:41 PM

duplicate post

Norseman

18th January 2008, 02:48 PM

Double posting.

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 02:49 PM

I think the ultimate refutation of the Bazant paper is the inability of anyone to find sets of buckled columns from the collapse initiation zones.

I can come up with many other arguments but the lack of "heat affected" core buckled columns is simple and none of you can debunk that.

There is no need to model the collapse, just the collapse initiation.

Collapse initation has always been the biggest mystery.

Once collapse is initiated, I personally don't give a hoot if collapse continues or is arrested.

So if yourselves or NIST cannot explain collapse initiation by showing the the failed core column sections from that zone, then you have pretty much been debunked, no?

Mangled objects in the rubble and chaos won't pass as an excuse for not finding them.

Core columns within the rubble are remarkably well preserved and the damage patterns contain all the information we need to understand what initiated collapse.

So in this thread not much more info will be needed to debunk the Bazant model except for what Gregory requires.

Your move. Please produce some representative damaged core columns from the collapse initiation zones or simply admit that you can't.

I'll be pestering you until you do.

HawksFan

18th January 2008, 02:49 PM

another duplicate

Norseman

18th January 2008, 02:52 PM

Once again, can anyone show me a few photos of recovered buckled core columns from the collapse initiation zones?

Why do you think that you can't find some representative samples of core columns from that area? There should be close to 100 of them. They are about 38 feet long. Hard to miss.

Sceptics?

Show me a few.

Where did they all go?

Buckling? Can you show me a few?

Like this one:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/1814147911cfef3c41.jpg

NIST NCSTAR 1-3C. Figure 4-5. It is column 605A, floor 98-101. Se also paragraph 4.1.2 for NIST's take on the damage.

SDC

18th January 2008, 02:58 PM

Just a question for you fellows talking with MT. Does he pay attention to anything you post? It doesn't appear that way. In the real world, dealing with someone who won't acknowledge others' points is, of course, very difficult. Even if he weren't, fundamentally, playing "where's Waldo?", this behavior, this refusal to engage, would remove the point to the conversation.

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 02:59 PM

Sitting in a parking lot? Bent in the middle with ripped off ends? No reason I shouldn't trust that.

Representative samples?

I think the ultimate refutation of the Bazant paper is the inability of anyone to find sets of buckled columns from the collapse initiation zones.

I can come up with many other arguments but the lack of "heat affected" core buckled columns is simple and none of you can debunk that.

There is no need to model the collapse, just the collapse initiation.

Collapse initation has always been the biggest mystery.

Once collapse is initiated, I personally don't give a hoot if collapse continues or is arrested.

So if yourselves or NIST cannot explain collapse initiation by showing the the failed core column sections from that zone, then you have pretty much been debunked, no?

Mangled objects in the rubble and chaos won't pass as an excuse for not finding them.

Core columns within the rubble are remarkably well preserved and the damage patterns contain all the information we need to understand what initiated collapse.

So in this thread not much more info will be needed to debunk the Bazant model except for what Gregory requires.

Your move. Please produce some representative damaged core columns from the collapse initiation zones or simply admit that you can't.

I'll be pestering you until you do.

HawksFan

18th January 2008, 03:06 PM

geez...another dupie

beachnut

18th January 2008, 03:18 PM

Like this one:
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/1814147911cfef3c41.jpg

NIST NCSTAR 1-3C. Figure 4-5. It is column 605A, floor 98-101. Se also paragraph 4.1.2 for NIST's take on the damage.

You did it!
Once again, can anyone show me a few photos of recovered buckled core columns from the collapse initiation zones?
Why do you think that you can't find some representative samples of core columns from that area? There should be close to 100 of them. They are about 38 feet long. Hard to miss.
Sceptics?
Show me a few.
Where did they all go?
Buckling? Can you show me a few?
Now he will pick up the goal posts and move them again! Sad fellow with the radio controlled bombs. Silent radio controlled bombs, going off without blast effects in his very photos.

DGM

18th January 2008, 03:25 PM

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 03:49 PM

As I have been saying for a long time, you must understand the representative conditions of these columns.

When you realize that the large, large majority of these columns, the overwhelming majority, are not even dented and have cleanly squared-off ends after having the same buildings fall on them, than the damaged ones are worth noting.

If you honestly believe that many of these core box columns were "mangled", then another mangled column doesn't mean anything.

Most of the readers here will never understand that.

Go Hawks!

The core box columns were not "mangled". They were preserved extremely well.

I collect representative photos, not individual photos.

This is how I know that Steven Jones was not telling the truth about "angle cuts".

This is how I know that buckling was neither the collapse mechanism in the core nor the perimeter.

This is now I know that molten "pools" of metal was nothing but a lie.

And this is how I know that your collapse initiation mechanism is just another lie.

If you believe in individual photos without understanding the larger context, ANYONE CAN FOOL YOU.

It is easy to fake an individual photo. It is easy to smash up an individual beam and take a picture of it.

But you cannot manipulate representative collections.

Gravy

18th January 2008, 04:01 PM

This is how I know that buckling was neither the collapse mechanism in the core nor the perimeter.

And this is how I know that your collapse initiation mechanism is just another lie.And this is how we know that you're incapable of learning. How sad.

Gravy

18th January 2008, 04:06 PM

Your move. Please produce some representative damaged core columns from the collapse initiation zones or simply admit that you can't.How many core columns were able to matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better.

I await your continued intellectual cowardice.

Major_Tom

18th January 2008, 04:18 PM

Show them to me , Gravy. If you can't, then there is very little difference between your approach and that of Steven Jones.

Show or you are lying, too.

DavidJames

18th January 2008, 04:40 PM

I think the ultimate refutation of the Bazant paper is the inability of anyone to find sets of buckled columns from the collapse initiation zones.Only in the bizarro world of CTists can a scientific paper have "ultimate refutation" by a guy looking at pictures.

Gravy

18th January 2008, 04:44 PM

Show them to me , Gravy. If you can't, then there is very little difference between your approach and that of Steven Jones.

Show or you are lying, too.Ha! I called it. The intellectual cowardice continues. Second time: how many core columns were able to matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better.

twinstead

18th January 2008, 09:42 PM

Only in the bizarro world of CTists can a scientific paper have "ultimate refutation" by a guy looking at pictures.

Dude. Pictures are da bomb.

Major_Tom

19th January 2008, 12:21 AM

Nobody is showing any images of the buckled columns in the collapse initiation zone.

I really thought that you folks could come up with at least a few.

Could it be true that the entire basis of ones belief that they exist simply be faith in the word of NIST?

I've been referring to people who blindly believe in the "thermite angle cuts" Steven Jones and the AE911 Truth folks feed the world as "The Cult of the Great Angle Cut".

I learned that the "great angle cut" is just disinfo by carefully studying the rubble.

I am sensing that the weakness in your entire argument and the Bazant collapse mechanism is the lack of buckled columns from the collapse initiation regions.

I know that some rather intelligent people do post in this forum and in all fairness I would like to give you gentlemen a little time to show me that the entire basis of your argument is not simply belief in people you may consider "authorities" and "experts".

As of this moment I would like to give some of the wiser folks posting here a chance to show me some actual evidence for your belief in collective buckling of core columns in the collapse initiation zones.

Dave? Apollo20? NB? Myriad? cmcaulif if you are reading? Others who answer with reason?

I know you must have some sounder reason for believing that core column heat-induced buckling was a major cause of collapse initiation than mere faith in NIST.

Could you please help me understand your reasons for believing so?

We know the most essential core columns were in rows 500 and 1000, and columns 601, 608, 901 and 908.

Showing me only one supposed column from 602 sitting in a parking lot taken from an angle where we cannot even inspect the "heat-induced buckle" just doesn't cut it.

Norseman?

Is your assumption based only on faith?

Faith in NIST?

Please don't let Gravy's dribblings be the best you have to offer. You must have more than faith and insults.

Gravy

19th January 2008, 12:59 AM

Third time, Major Tom: how many core columns were able to be matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better, if you're going to keep raising this issue.

Answer the question now, please.

bje

19th January 2008, 07:41 AM

Nobody is showing any images of the buckled columns in the collapse initiation zone.

Here we go again, repetition of the standard 9/11 Truther fallacy...

"If you can't show me a picture, it didn't happen."

Furcifer

19th January 2008, 07:45 AM

Does anyone know what the max load at fracture for the welds on the box columns is? (or some average based on plate thickness?) I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it in the NIST report.

Major_Tom

19th January 2008, 10:01 AM

I'll keep coming back to the question of faith as opposed to documented photographic evidence.

While we are waiting for a legitimate reply from someone I'd like to show you some important clues to understanding the collapse initiation as it applies to the infamous east face of WTC 2.

This, of course, is the best example of inward pulling of perimeter columns seen.

Let's look at that face below.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/mech_room.jpg

Notice the location of the mechanical room relative to floor 81 where the inward belding will form.

The mechanical room has noticably higher ceilings than the other floors both above and below.

I believe I have located where a number of perimeter columns of this mechanical room were found in the rubble. Could this be some of them?

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/mech_room_perimeter.jpg

These perimeter columns are clearly speared into the earth.

They were pushed outwards and fell close to 80 floors. They were then speared into the earth with obvious extreme force.

Despite this, they held up well and exhibit no noticable buckling along their lengths.

As odd as that may seem, it is the location at which they were found that is even more surprising.

The following 2 photos will help us identify their location.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/mech_room_perimeter_2.jpg

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/mech_room_perimeter_3.jpg

These columns were located on the edge of the street on the other side of WTC 4.

They were some of the farthest columns spotted in that direction.

Lets look at a map of the complex.

http://www.sharpprintinginc.com/911_math/wtc_map.jpg

These columns cleared the entire WTC 4 building.

If you recall, the perimeter a few floors above the mechanical room was seen being pulled INWARD just before collapse initiation and entire upper block leaned southeast and crushed the perimeter below by it's DOWNWARD motion.

I, too, just assumed that the mechanical room perimeter columns on the east face would be crushed and pushed downwards.

So how did they get all the way out here, clearly unbuckled and speared into the ground?

Don't the large number of perimeter sections lying peeled outwards and retaining many of their spandrel plate bolt connections intact, also clearly unbucked, hold vital clues as to how the "collapse progression" occurred along the east side of WTC 2?

I have many more photos of these perimeter column "sheets" which we can look at.

Major_Tom

19th January 2008, 10:15 AM

Does anyone know what the max load at fracture for the welds on the box columns is? (or some average based on plate thickness?) I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it in the NIST report.

Great question. And their ability to handle some torque. Their ability to "sway".

Anyone know?

DGM

19th January 2008, 10:21 AM

Major Tom:
You are looking more and more irrational with every post. You need to deal with the sounds (and other blast effects) involved with what you are suggesting. To give a column a "kick" like you suggest requires a large amount of explosives.

Your collection of photos are exceptional. Why waste this effort with irrational behavior? Why not deal with this inconvenient problem while there are still people willing to listen and rationalize the arguments you may possess?

Major_Tom

19th January 2008, 11:17 AM

To give a column a "kick" like you suggest requires a large amount of explosives.

Depends on the column and on the weld.

Newtons Bit and others have been talking about how the welds are very vulnerable to a short, sharp lateral movement.

The idea is that the column would be not under load when the kick is applied, so it simply needs to act on the weld and displace the column slightly.

I was hopng some of the folks here with more knowledge about welds could help us understand just how small a device one could get away with.

Please notice that the outward peeling of the east perimeter of the South Tower and the location of many of the mechanical room perimeter columns mentioned 2 of my posts ago can go a long way in determining what outward forces were involved in collapse initiation along that facade.

Thanks for the compliment concerning the photos. Many more high quality photos are being converted to a web-safe form and will appear very soon.

Norseman

19th January 2008, 11:19 AM

............
So how did they get all the way out here, clearly unbuckled and speared into the ground?

Don't the large number of perimeter sections lying peeled outwards and retaining many of their spandrel plate bolt connections intact, also clearly unbucked, hold vital clues as to how the "collapse progression" occurred along the east side of WTC 2?

I have many more photos of these perimeter column "sheets" which we can look at.

Major Tom, notice the large wall section coming out of the dust cloud after the upper block has passed. That is the east exterior wall of the lower block pivoting out after being pushed outwards by the upper falling block. Where do you think do upper part of that wall section will land?
nLHGLI1Ihv0&feature

Heiwa

19th January 2008, 11:32 AM

Why do you keep linking to a worthless paper? You are demonstrably incompetent to write a paper on the collapses of the Twin Towers.

?? You have apparently not done my simple model test for children at http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist1.htm#6 . Do it ... and shut up!

Evidently a little fire in the initiation zone of WTC1 does not cause global collapse as alleged by NIST and Bazant with a result as shown in all pictures of rubble above.

Do not be incivil in arguing your point. If you cannot be civil, you will be suspended or banned.

WildCat

19th January 2008, 11:34 AM

Evidently a little fire in the initiation zone of WTC1 does not cause global collapse as alleged by NIST and Bazant with a result as shown in all pictures of rubble above.
Why do you lie about the conclusions of Bazant and Zhou?

DGM

19th January 2008, 12:50 PM

?? You have apparently not done my simple model test for children at http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist1.htm#6 . Do it ... and shut up!

Evidently a little fire in the initiation zone of WTC1 does not cause global collapse as alleged by NIST and Bazant with a result as shown in all pictures of rubble above.
Try your experiment with rectangular tubing instead of pipe. The results are completely different. I suspect you already know this that is why you specified pipe. I'm a welder and a metal fabricator so don't try to BS me. Your experiment is junk and fatally flawed by design.
Why did you do that? Did you think because you wrote this for children no one would catch on?

Tony Szamboti

19th January 2008, 02:45 PM

Depends on the column and on the weld.

Newtons Bit and others have been talking about how the welds are very vulnerable to a short, sharp lateral movement.

The idea is that the column would be not under load when the kick is applied, so it simply needs to act on the weld and displace the column slightly.

I was hopng some of the folks here with more knowledge about welds could help us understand just how small a device one could get away with.

Please notice that the outward peeling of the east perimeter of the South Tower and the location of many of the mechanical room perimeter columns mentioned 2 of my posts ago can go a long way in determining what outward forces were involved in collapse initiation along that facade.

Thanks for the compliment concerning the photos. Many more high quality photos are being converted to a web-safe form and will appear very soon.

The photos are quite interesting. As for the welds, I have calculated what it would take to generate the fracture stress due to bending in the welds of one of the large 52 x 22 x 1.875 wall 500 or 1000 series box columns in the middle of the tower. The weld is only on the long sides of the column and the section modulus (I/c) of that weld would be 1092 in**3. If the weld material was E70 then at least 70,000 psi had to be generated to fully fracture it. Just considering the bending stress, and not the shear, and using the assumption of a force applied 72 inches below the weld, that force would need to be approximately 1 million pounds. How much explosive would be needed to generate that force on the side of the column I am not sure of but we do know that RDX generates pressures of 3 million psi so what you are saying seems plausible, although I wouldn't necessarily call it a small kick. These forces would also cause the column to bow inward adjacent to the blast making it appear as though some buckling had occurred at the top of the column. The core column that Newtons Bit showed a few days ago, which was on a flatbed truck, and was buckled up at its end, seems like it could have been damaged with the type of mechanism of which you speak.

DGM

19th January 2008, 02:53 PM

Tony Szamboti

19th January 2008, 03:15 PM

And make one hell of a noise! It's a shame he can't deal with this.

BTW Tony wouldn't you need to pre-heat the welded piece to obtain these strenghts?

Until we know how much explosive would be needed to generate this force we can't be sure what the noise level would be over distance which would also be damped by being inside the building.

Preheating is normally done to ensure that rapid cooling doesn't take place in the parent material to weld inteface which would set up residual stresses.

I am just going on the allowable strength of E70 weld metal for a rough conservative estimate of the force required. However, it is more likely that the interface between the A36 parent material and the weld material would have fractured first. In that case the yield strength would have been lower and a lower force required.

DGM

19th January 2008, 03:45 PM

Until we know how much explosive would be needed to generate this force we can't be sure what the noise level would be over distance which would also be damped by being inside the building.

Preheating is normally done to ensure that rapid cooling doesn't take place in the parent material to weld inteface which would set up residual stresses.

I am just going on the allowable strength of E70 weld metal for a rough conservative estimate of the force required. However, it is more likely that the interface between the A36 parent material and the weld material would have fractured first. In that case the yield strength would have been lower and a lower force required.
Agreed! I'm just surprised that Major Tom would think that these welds would not break before the columns yielded. These straight columns are of no surprise to anyone in the trade.

Heiwa

19th January 2008, 09:09 PM

Try your experiment with rectangular tubing instead of pipe. The results are completely different. I suspect you already know this that is why you specified pipe. I'm a welder and a metal fabricator so don't try to BS me. Your experiment is junk and fatally flawed by design.
Why did you do that? Did you think because you wrote this for children no one would catch on?

You can alternatively use two L-angles, say 35x35x1 mm and weld them together as a square box and use them as legs. Same result.

Heiwa

19th January 2008, 09:39 PM

Why do you lie about the conclusions of Bazant and Zhou?

Because release of potential energy of a mass above (cause) does not cause global collapse due to lack of strain energy of the structure below (effect) as alleged by NIST and Bazant (and Zhou).

The two are not related! First of all the potential energy must be applied to the structure below - there is no evidence for that.

NIST and Bazant assume the application of potential energy is an impact at high velocity on the structure below. No evidence for that.

If the application is at low velocity, which is the case, stresses in the structure below (and above!) are hardly affected and will evidently be same before and after loading.

It like hitting a nail (structure below) with a hammer (potential energy released). Too little speed nothing happens. To much speed nail bends and hammer slides off the nail and the energy is lost. It is not easy to hit a nail.

Bazant actually assumes that WTC1 is hammered 90 times; mass above (rigid and stiff all the time) first drops one floor that magically disappeared due to heat (the initiation zone) and crushes the floor below, i.e. deforms/buckles the supporting columns there and sweeps them out of the way (no evidence for that), then it drops another floor with same effect, then again ... 90 times. Evidently the rubble does not show any buckled columns, like that. Anywhere.

So Bazant's and Zhou's basic assumption is 100% wrong. Garbage in = garbage out.

NIST has abandoned the hammer/nail theory and suggests (FAQ Dec 2007) that 5-10 floors (in mass above) suddenly dropped down in the initiation zone (cause) and overloaded the first floor of the structure below (effect).

There is no evidence for that cause at all. It is pure fantasy. Note that NIST actually assumes that the mass above first disintegrates (before it was solid and stiff) and that now some subparts of the mass above (floors) suddenly drop down and do the hammering!

But again, there is no evidence that even one floor suddenly dropped!

In my article for children I just politely ask NIST and Bazant to re-do their analysises. No big deal! Very often mistakes are done in technical papers for various reasons.

Norseman

19th January 2008, 10:37 PM

The photos are quite interesting. As for the welds, I have calculated what it would take to generate the fracture stress due to bending in the welds of one of the large 52 x 22 x 1.875 wall 500 or 1000 series box columns in the middle of the tower. The weld is only on the long sides of the column and the section modulus (I/c) of that weld would be 1092 in**3. If the weld material was E70 then at least 70,000 psi had to be generated to fully fracture it. Just considering the bending stress, and not the shear, and using the assumption of a force applied 72 inches below the weld, that force would need to be approximately 1 million pounds. How much explosive would be needed to generate that force on the side of the column I am not sure of but we do know that RDX generates pressures of 3 million psi so what you are saying seems plausible, although I wouldn't necessarily call it a small kick. These forces would also cause the column to bow inward adjacent to the blast making it appear as though some buckling had occurred at the top of the column. The core column that Newtons Bit showed a few days ago, which was on a flatbed truck, and was buckled up at its end, seems like it could have been damaged with the type of mechanism of which you speak.

No, the explosive would cut through the steel plate on the side it was applied like the column was not there. It would not affect the weld 72 inches below. Simply because the steel in contact with the explosive would not be able to transfer any significant amount of force from the detonation to the remainder of the column before it yields. Note the enormous difference in the pressure numbers per square inch you quoted realcddeal. If there is not enough explosive to cut the steel it will leave a local plastic deformation/cracking. Even less it would only soil the paint. In other words the effect would be very local. It is a bit like the old tablecloth trick. Or like putting a banana in cup so that it stands up vertically and swing a knife at high speed horizontally at it. The knife will cut the banana in half like it was not there. Doing it at slow speed you will just push it and the cup over.

If you are going to bend the whole column with the pressure wave from an explosive, you would need to detonate a very large bomb away from the column. That would subject the column to a lower pressure per square inch, but it would be applied over a larger surface area. But even this is difficult. The 1993 car bomb was parked close to the south wall of WTC 1 did not manage to do it. That was a 1500 pound bomb.

Newtons Bit

19th January 2008, 10:48 PM

Norseman

19th January 2008, 10:57 PM

Until we know how much explosive would be needed to generate this force we can't be sure what the noise level would be over distance which would also be damped by being inside the building.

You should check out how small the charges used in real CD implosions are, they are surprisingly small. And they do it with the smallest amount of explosives possible, thats with pre weakening. And yet the detonations are not exactly soundless. You should watch all the videos in this post and especially note the comments about the windows:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3301537#post3301537

And there is no way that you and Major Tom can get away with bombs smaller than what is used in the demolition industry. Quite the contrary. And they would have been heard very loud and clear.

Major_Tom

19th January 2008, 10:58 PM

DGM says

Agreed! I'm just surprised that Major Tom would think that these welds would not break before the columns yielded. These straight columns are of no surprise to anyone in the trade.

Do you see much mention of the abundance of straight core columns in the thousands of pages of the NIST reports? It wasn't obvious to them.

If it is so obvious, why doesn't Bazant mention it in his analysis? It wasn't obvious to him.

Many people have imagined bucked, mangled core and perimeter columns for 6 years.

Many of you folks have been steeped in that illusion, and your posts reflected that.

I mention it, show an overwhelming amount of photographic evidence to back what I say, and now you call it common knowledge.

Realcddeal remarks

If the weld material was E70 then at least 70,000 psi had to be generated to fully fracture it. Just considering the bending stress, and not the shear, and using the assumption of a force applied 72 inches below the weld, that force would need to be approximately 1 million pounds.

Being totally open to possibilities, we would consider the placing of the device right on the weld.

Or, like a baseball bat has a "sweet spot", placing the device at an optimum location along the column to provide the maximum .....destructive vibrations?

We would be totally open to the device used. The highly skilled planners would carefully choose, or "fine tune" the device to serve the task at hand.

I would never want to suggest that these planners were not VERY TALENTED at what they do.

Limiting ourselves to the most conventional devices would be unwise.

Like the use of any hand tool, the craftsman uses the proper tool for the task at hand and has a shop full of specialty tools.

They are much better at choosing the proper tool than we are. The best we can do is to know the general possibilities and to keep our minds open.

How would it be possible to know expected noise levels without a general knowledge of possible choices of device and particular welds under attack.

There is no generic answer. Why do people keep asking generic questions as if the perpetrators were amateurs?

Newtons Bit

19th January 2008, 11:07 PM

No, the explosive would cut through the steel plate on the side it was applied like the column was not there. It would not affect the weld 72 inches below. Simply because the steel in contact with the explosive would not be able to transfer any significant amount of force from the detonation to the remainder of the column before it yields. Note the enormous difference in the pressure numbers per square inch you quoted realcddeal. If there is not enough explosive to cut the steel it will leave a local plastic deformation/cracking. Even less it would only soil the paint. In other words the effect would be very local. It is a bit like the old tablecloth trick. Or like putting a banana in cup so that it stands up vertically and swing a knife at high speed horizontally at it. The knife will cut the banana in half like it was not there. Doing it at slow speed you will just push it and the cup over.

If you are going to bend the whole column with the pressure wave from an explosive, you would need to detonate a very large bomb away from the column. That would subject the column to a lower pressure per square inch, but it would be applied over a larger surface area. But even this is difficult. The 1993 car bomb was parked close to the south wall of WTC 1 did not manage to do it. That was a 1500 pound bomb.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/WTC_1993_ATF.jpg

No columns were destroyed in that terrorist attack. The reason why is fairly obvious to anyone who has spent a little bit of time looking at blast engineering. I'll elaborate a little:

Structural members only carry forces that can be delivered to them. A single steel column itself is extremely resistant to non-shaped charge blast events because it has a small surface area. Walls and floors have very large surface areas, and even low pressures can mean huge forces at the connections. A typical floor slab in a parking garage will be designed for 100-200psf of live load. That's equivalent to about 1psi. Interior walls that will never see wind are typically designed for 5psf pressure loads (typically from HVAC units on the fritz), and that's only 0.07psi.

Pressures from blast easily overload the the floors and walls, either at the members themselves or the connections, but typically don't overload the columns. This is because the columns are designed to take many floors at something just less than what can cause the floors and walls to collapse.

This applies to steel columns. Concrete columns, such as the ones at the Murrah Building in OKC, have much larger surface areas and are more susceptible to blast.

If non-shaped charge explosives were used to "aid" the destruction of the towers on 9/11, we would expect to hear them, and we would expect to see them. This would be evident in extremely large ejections of glass and wall.

beachnut

19th January 2008, 11:49 PM

.. but we do know that RDX ...
So Jones is wrong, it was RDX. Silent RDX? Do you have a sample of this silent RDX? I need to see the silent RDX. I have never seen silent RDX yet. But no thermite, just RDX? Wow, realcddeal has RDX for WTC failure, the silent kind! Wow.

If you read your papers you would never see a single piece of evidence for RDX, and your failure to prove a simple model like Bazant and Zhou's wrong. BTW, you can not prove Bazant and Zhou's model wrong, because it is a model, and it is just exactly what it is. Who is dumb enough to refute a simple model?

Funny stuff, damped by the 200 foot building? So your damping is only 100 feet MAX!!? The 95% air building damped the sound of RDX. NEXT dumb idea please. NEXT! Do you know how far damped RDX sounds go? Do you know the blast effects of RDX? Do you know why the experts wrap the charges in mattresses? Do you know anything about anything related to 9/11?

Are you sure you are an engineer?

Gravy

20th January 2008, 12:12 AM

Yoo-hoo! Major Toooooom!

Fourth time: how many core columns were able to be matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better, if you're going to keep raising this issue.

Answer the question now, please.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 12:17 AM

Until we know how much explosive would be needed to generate this force we can't be sure what the noise level would be over distance which would also be damped by being inside the building. Once again, I demand that you point out when the detonations occurred. Tell us the minutes and seconds in this video when the charges that blew out the core columns detonated.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s

Afraid to do it, Tony? Of course you are. Because you've also seen clips like these:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#11m55s

Gravy

20th January 2008, 12:31 AM

This, of course, is the best example of inward pulling of perimeter columns seen.No, this is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s

Note that there are no detonations. How does this fit in with your hypothesis – if you can even manage express a hypothesis – Major Tom?

Major_Tom

20th January 2008, 01:51 AM

Once again, I demand that you point out when the detonations occurred. Tell us the minutes and seconds in this video when the charges that blew out the core columns detonated.

You demand?

Realcddeal, in a different thread you mentioned

The welds would have maintained most of the moment of inertia of the columns since they were on the outside. The weld planes would thus have had nearly the same bending strength as the column itself. This would have allowed the central core to be self supporting.

However, if their welds did not have the complete cross section of the columns in the core then they would not have maintained the same resistance to shear at the weld planes.

and

We calculate the strength of welds by treating them as a line using the moment of inertia of the weld. We then determine fillet size needed based upon the area stress imparted to it. They would not need to be the same thickness as the cross section to retain most of the moment of inertia of the column. Haven't you ever heard the saying that "pound for pound tubes or pipes are stronger than solids"? The reason is that the tube retains the moment of inertia, which is an exponential function of distance from the center.

Enough resistance to bending from buckling under their own weight is all the central core welds would need for it to be self supporting, as it is obvious it had the cross section to withstand compressive loads. I have a surprise for you also, it could have taken some level of wind load also. Maybe not 100 mph but I would not doubt it could take 50 mph while also being self supporting. A simple analysis will show these things to be true. Do you care to show something different?

and

Lets take a 503 box column at the 60th floor. It is 52" x 20" x 1.875" wall thickness. Taking it as a complete box and ignoring the insets of the end plates, for simplicity, the moment of inertia for that box column about the axis parallel to the 20" width is 17,413 in.e4. If the weld has a one inch penetration it's moment of inertia is 9,213 in.e4 which is 53% of the moment of inertia of the full column cross section. About the axis crossing the width it retains 57% of the moment of inertia. This is significant like I said. You are the one placing the 75% factor on it. I didn't.

Considering the fact that the weld is made of material which has a significantly higher yield strength than that of the parent material, in the case of A36 yield is 36,000 psi and E70 weld metal is 58,000 psi, it would have nearly the same resistance to bending stresses.

Realcddeal, I find what you said to be interesting because it seems to be consistent with the photographs and video of the North Tower spire.

About 15 seconds of swaying was witnessed and there was no recognizable strong base seen after the smoke cleared holding up these core columns standing close to 50 stories high.

The distinction you mention between the ability of these columns to experience limited swaying in the wind, as opposed to the ability of the weld to resist lateral forces is interesting.

I can't help notice that photos and video of the North Tower spire seem to show that you had a good point.

It also seems to show that your critics were probably mistaken in their underestimation of the ability of these columns to "fight back".

Any more information you have on the distinction between the welds ability to resist lateral forces as opposed to the ability to withstand swaying would be greatly appreciated.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 02:32 AM

You demand?

A bizarre question, from someone who says this:

Once again, can anyone show me a few photos of recovered buckled core columns from the collapse initiation zones?

Why do you think that you can't find some representative samples of core columns from that area? There should be close to 100 of them. They are about 38 feet long. Hard to miss.

Sceptics?

Show me a few.

Where did they all go?

Buckling? Can you show me a few?

I think the ultimate refutation of the Bazant paper is the inability of anyone to find sets of buckled columns from the collapse initiation zones.

I can come up with many other arguments but the lack of "heat affected" core buckled columns is simple and none of you can debunk that.

...So if yourselves or NIST cannot explain collapse initiation by showing the the failed core column sections from that zone, then you have pretty much been debunked, no?

...Your move. Please produce some representative damaged core columns from the collapse initiation zones or simply admit that you can't.

I'll be pestering you until you do.
And again:
I think the ultimate refutation of the Bazant paper is the inability of anyone to find sets of buckled columns from the collapse initiation zones.

I can come up with many other arguments but the lack of "heat affected" core buckled columns is simple and none of you can debunk that.

...So if yourselves or NIST cannot explain collapse initiation by showing the the failed core column sections from that zone, then you have pretty much been debunked, no?

...Core columns within the rubble are remarkably well preserved and the damage patterns contain all the information we need to understand what initiated collapse.

...Your move. Please produce some representative damaged core columns from the collapse initiation zones or simply admit that you can't.

I'll be pestering you until you do.

Show them to me , Gravy. If you can't, then there is very little difference between your approach and that of Steven Jones.

Show or you are lying, too.

Nobody is showing any images of the buckled columns in the collapse initiation zone.

I really thought that you folks could come up with at least a few.

...I am sensing that the weakness in your entire argument and the Bazant collapse mechanism is the lack of buckled columns from the collapse initiation regions.

...As of this moment I would like to give some of the wiser folks posting here a chance to show me some actual evidence for your belief in collective buckling of core columns in the collapse initiation zones.

Dave? Apollo20? NB? Myriad? cmcaulif if you are reading? Others who answer with reason?

I know you must have some sounder reason for believing that core column heat-induced buckling was a major cause of collapse initiation than mere faith in NIST.

...Please don't let Gravy's dribblings be the best you have to offer. You must have more than faith and insults.

All of which prompts the question, which I ask for the fifth time, how many core columns were able to be matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better, if you're going to keep raising this issue.

Answer the question now, please.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 07:58 AM

Below is a link to a chapter about various explosive methods and the blast effects from a NAVSEA handbook. I would imagine a number of individuals here would be interested.

http://wetlands.simplyaquatics.com/d/14926-1/chap_10.pdf

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 08:06 AM

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/WTC_1993_ATF.jpg

No columns were destroyed in that terrorist attack. The reason why is fairly obvious to anyone who has spent a little bit of time looking at blast engineering. I'll elaborate a little:

Structural members only carry forces that can be delivered to them. A single steel column itself is extremely resistant to non-shaped charge blast events because it has a small surface area. Walls and floors have very large surface areas, and even low pressures can mean huge forces at the connections. A typical floor slab in a parking garage will be designed for 100-200psf of live load. That's equivalent to about 1psi. Interior walls that will never see wind are typically designed for 5psf pressure loads (typically from HVAC units on the fritz), and that's only 0.07psi.

Pressures from blast easily overload the the floors and walls, either at the members themselves or the connections, but typically don't overload the columns. This is because the columns are designed to take many floors at something just less than what can cause the floors and walls to collapse.

This applies to steel columns. Concrete columns, such as the ones at the Murrah Building in OKC, have much larger surface areas and are more susceptible to blast.

If non-shaped charge explosives were used to "aid" the destruction of the towers on 9/11, we would expect to hear them, and we would expect to see them. This would be evident in extremely large ejections of glass and wall.

Explosive blasts decay exponentially so one would not expect any columns to have been destroyed in the 1993 WTC bombing with the distance of the explosion and the surface area and strength of the columns.

However, one would think that tamping could be used to loosely direct the force of a wide but relatively light ribbon charge at close range to generate the force and create a large bending moment at the weld. This would be different from a shaped charge which would be used to highly focus the energy for cutting. Take a look at the chapter on explosives from a NAVSEA handbook that I provided.

DGM

20th January 2008, 08:15 AM

Explosive blasts decay exponentially so one would not expect any columns to have been destroyed in the 1993 WTC bombing with the distance of the explosion and the surface area and strength of the columns.

However, tamping could be used to loosely direct the force of a small charge at close range and create a large bending moment at the weld. This would be different from a shaped charge which would be used to highly focus the energy for cutting. Take a look at the chapter on explosives from a NAVSEA handbook that I provided.
Small as in how many pounds where they are placed and how many of them?

Gravy

20th January 2008, 08:18 AM

Take a look at the chapter on explosives from a NAVSEA handbook that I provided.Second time, Tony Szamboti: for a change, take a look at reality and tell us exactly when the detonations occurred:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...85611926#1m10s (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s)

Afraid to do it, Tony? Of course you are. Because you've also seen clips like these:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...5611926#11m55s (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#11m55s)

DGM

20th January 2008, 08:20 AM

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 08:25 AM

Tony:
Can you tell us why you would reference an article for underwater demolition. Water contains and focuses explosive forces better than air. Does it not?

This article isn't just about charges in water. You need to read the whole thing.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 08:29 AM

Second time, Tony Szamboti: for a change, take a look at reality and tell us exactly when the detonations occurred:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...85611926#1m10s (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s)

Afraid to do it, Tony? Of course you are. Because you've also seen clips like these:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...5611926#11m55s (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#11m55s)

Of course, I forgot that you are now the self annointed commissar of whether or not explosives are used in a situation. The science behind your claims "well we would hear them if they were there" no matter that a very loud collapse was occurring. Nobody can compete with you for sheer brazenness.

uk_dave

20th January 2008, 08:33 AM

ahhhhhh I see...the explosions occured during the collapse...right.

ummmmm in that case, what were they for?

DGM

20th January 2008, 08:39 AM

This article isn't just about charges in water. You need to read the whole thing.
I know, but using a small charge to introduce a large bending moment is only effective underwater. The resistance of the water enhances the effect allowing the charge to be smaller. In air to get the same effect the charge needs to be orders of magnitude larger due to the air offering less resistance that the piece you are trying to bend.

Anyway you look at it you still have a very large BOOM!

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 09:11 AM

I know, but using a small charge to introduce a large bending moment is only effective underwater. The resistance of the water enhances the effect allowing the charge to be smaller. In air to get the same effect the charge needs to be orders of magnitude larger due to the air offering less resistance that the piece you are trying to bend.

Anyway you look at it you still have a very large BOOM!

Not if the charge is up against the target and tamped. The resistance from air or lack of would not play a part. These charges could have also been sized for each target.

As far as the noise is concerned I believe the noise from small charges could have been masked by the collapse. I believe it is feasible that thermal weakening, as proposed by Max Photon, could have been used to initiiate the collapse and once started small explosives used to take out the outer core columns to ensure the collapse kept moving reliably. The corners of the perimeter wall could have been thermally weakened also to remove the stiffness of the perimeter. This would cause the peeling effect discussed by Major Tom. The molten (non-aluminum) metal coming from the corner of WTC2, just prior to collapse, provides some level of credence to that notion.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 09:17 AM

Not if the charge is up against the target and tamped. The resistance from air or lack of would not play a part. These charges could have also been sized for each target.

As far as the noise is concerned I believe the noise from small charges could have been masked by the collapse. I believe it is feasible that thermal weakening, as proposed by Max Photon, could have been used to initiiate the collapse and once started small explosives used to take out the outer core columns to ensure the collapse kept moving reliably. The corners of the perimeter wall could have been thermally weakened also to remove the stiffness of the perimeter. This would cause the peeling effect discussed by Major Tom. The molten (non-aluminum) metal coming from the corner of WTC2, just prior to collapse, provides some level of credence to that notion.

You've been reduced to citing the obsessive and uninformed ravings of an agenda-driven ignoramus? This is better than folding up your tent and acknowledging that your evil movement is dead? You have a background in engineering?
Tell us again about the role played by those terribly inconvenient planes.

DGM

20th January 2008, 09:23 AM

Not if the charge is up against the target and tamped. The resistance from air or lack of would not play a part. These charges could have also been sized for each target.

As far as the noise is concerned I believe the noise from small charges could have been masked by the collapse. I believe it is feasible that thermal weakening, as proposed by Max Photon, could have been used to initiiate the collapse and once started small explosives used to take out the outer core columns to ensure the collapse kept moving reliably. The corners of the perimeter wall could have been thermally weakened also to remove the stiffness of the perimeter. This would cause the peeling effect discussed by Major Tom. The molten (non-aluminum) metal coming from the corner of WTC2, just prior to collapse, provides some level of credence to that notion.
Tony:
Your reaching here. Your still talking about charges in the order of 20 to 30 pounds (very low end estimate). Do you have any idea how much BOOM that makes not to mention the shock wave.

When did they setup all of this "tamping"? Do you realize how large of a thing your talking about. I've been involved with controlled demolitions and what your talking about would not be hidden by the sound of the collapse.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 09:27 AM

Of course, I forgot that you are now the self annointed commissar of whether or not explosives are used in a situation. The science behind your claims "well we would hear them if they were there" no matter that a very loud collapse was occurring. Nobody can compete with you for sheer brazenness.Had you bothered to watch the closeup of the south wall buckling inward, you'd know there's no audio. That's because I want you to see it. Get it? See the smoke coming out of all the open windows? Show us where it's perturbed by these detonations, before the collapse.

You – a grown man – aren't still afraid of a little reality, are you, Tony Szamboti?

No running, no hiding, no excuses. Show us.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#1m10s

Major_Tom

20th January 2008, 09:38 AM

how many core columns were able to be matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones?

How many photos of these columns were photographed and shown to the public?

The very "602" column shown before, the lone photo that anyone was able to provide thus far, is interesting. I believe I have located it in the rubble.

Not too hard to find as it was sitting on the top of the rubble.

Please tell me you have more photographic evidence of core column buckling during the collapse initiation.

Just to make this exchange more interesting, perhaps I should temporarily switch sides of the argument, just to help you folks out?

Perhaps I can find more columns from the collapse initiation zones in photos of the crime scene than you can using the NIST bibles?

beachnut

20th January 2008, 09:41 AM

Not if the charge is up against the target and tamped. The resistance from air or lack of would not play a part. These charges could have also been sized for each target.

As far as the noise is concerned I believe the noise from small charges could have been masked by the collapse. I believe it is feasible that thermal weakening, as proposed by Max Photon, could have been used to initiiate the collapse and once started small explosives used to take out the outer core columns to ensure the collapse kept moving reliably. The corners of the perimeter wall could have been thermally weakened also to remove the stiffness of the perimeter. This would cause the peeling effect discussed by Major Tom. The molten (non-aluminum) metal coming from the corner of WTC2, just prior to collapse, provides some level of credence to that notion.
You believe wrong. Max Photo, glad you hooked your false information wagon to the pure fantasy train, you will get to your destination faster.

As in your paper, there is no support for your ideas. How can an engineer suspend logic and rational thinking to make up false ideas proven wrong by events.

The sound of your RDX is hidden by the falling building? Did you even think of what that means; even a 1st grade kid with some poking can solve that stupid statement of insanity.

Tony, by using Max's work, and Maj Tom, you have shown why your paper and your ideas are pure junk science, hearsay, 9/11 truth peer review quality.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 09:58 AM

You've been reduced to citing the obsessive and uninformed ravings of an agenda-driven ignoramus? This is better than folding up your tent and acknowledging that your evil movement is dead? You have a background in engineering?
Tell us again about the role played by those terribly inconvenient planes.

They would have been a causal ruse to have us believe they caused the collapses due to impact damage and fire. The fires would have also masked the thermal weakening used to initiate the collapse.

You do know that the fireproofing was upgraded on pretty much just the failure areas in the year or so before Sept. 11, 2001 don't you?

Have you ever wondered why NIST only got a small amount of steel from the fire affected areas?

You would probably make a bad detective.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 10:05 AM

Tony:
Your reaching here. Your still talking about charges in the order of 20 to 30 pounds (very low end estimate). Do you have any idea how much BOOM that makes not to mention the shock wave.

When did they setup all of this "tamping"? Do you realize how large of a thing your talking about. I've been involved with controlled demolitions and what your talking about would not be hidden by the sound of the collapse.

You would need to show me your calculations for the charges and the induced bending moments. I think the amount of actual explosive needed is far smaller and much less noise producing than what you state.

I have shown by calculation here that the welds on the core columns were stronger than most thought, although not as strong as the actual columns they connected.

beachnut

20th January 2008, 10:08 AM

They would have been a causal ruse to have us believe they caused the collapses due to impact damage and fire. The fires would have also masked the thermal weakening used to initiate the collapse.

You do know that the fireproofing was upgraded on pretty much just the failure areas in the year or so before Sept. 11, 2001 don't you?

Have you ever wondered why NIST only got a small amount of steel from the fire affected areas?

You would probably make a bad detective.
The under the floor fireproofing, you seem to lack research capabilities. Yes, you can lift the ceiling tile an inspect your work area! You could see Max's shock tube, your RDX charge wires! And all! The under floor fireproofing was very friable, and would fall off if you blew on it! It was up graded as needed! The fire department actually inspect buildings, and has no restrictions on finding out why there are Sock tubes form and insane person in the WTC, or why wires go into the wall for no reason.

You are the one who needs to get a life and wake up to the fact there is not a silent RDX bomb with radio control from Maj Tom!

This is getting funny as the nut case ideas gather to form realcddeal, Max, Maj Tom, and a few other characters who all have different ideas of how the WTC failed.

This is a classic case of false ideas being mixed to support a bigger dumb idea.

DGM

20th January 2008, 10:13 AM

You would need to show me your calculations for the charges and the induced bending moments. I think the amount of actual explosive needed is far smaller and much less noise producing than what you state.

I have shown by calculation here that the welds on the core columns were stronger than most thought, although not as strong as the actual columns they connected.
Actually Tony you are the one that needs to show the amount necessary. Nice try at shifting the burden of proof though. It's your theory try backing it up. It's not my responsibility to prove you wrong. Why can't you "truthers" get that.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 10:17 AM

They would have been a causal ruse to have us believe they caused the collapses due to impact damage and fire. The fires would have also masked the thermal weakening used to initiate the collapse.

So, your evil movement is capable of demonstrating that the planes could not have caused the collapses in the manner the real scientists and engineers claim they did? Why haven't you succeeded in doing so? I constantly see conspiracy liars getting their heads handed to them by people like Ryan Mackey, Dr. Greening, Newton's Bit, and other qualified researchers whenever they try peddling their snake oil.

You do know that the fireproofing was upgraded on pretty much just the failure areas in the year or so before Sept. 11, 2001 don't you?

Have you ever wondered why NIST only got a small amount of steel from the fire affected areas?

Let's not pass over this question too hastily. You see, when I wondered about the steel NIST used for its tests, I did something that wouldn't occur to you: I phoned NIST and spoke to Mike Newman, who explained that NIST had obtained all the steel it required.

You would probably make a bad detective.

Hard to say. I'm logical but lazy. You, on the other hand, would make a terrible detective. You have contempt for evidentiary reasoning; you start with your conclusion and shoehorn the evidence into it; you are incapable of distinguishing the significant from the trivial; perhaps most importantly, you overlook important clues that are right under your nose.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 10:19 AM

Actually Tony you are the one that needs to show the amount necessary. Nice try at shifting the burden of proof though. It's your theory try backing it up. It's not my responsibility to prove you wrong. Why can't you "truthers" get that.

You are claiming 20 to 30 pounds so you should back that up.

With a quick look at it it is much less but I'll do more than that over the next few weeks. Talk to you later about it.

DGM

20th January 2008, 10:25 AM

You are claiming 20 to 30 pounds so you should back that up.

With a quick look at it it is much less but I'll do more than that over the next few weeks. Talk to you later about it.
I will do the calculations to support my stated estimate. Do you want to tell me what column size we're dealing with (location of the charges)?

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 10:26 AM

Let's not pass over this question too hastily. You see, when I wondered about the steel NIST used for its tests, I did something that wouldn't occur to you: I phoned NIST and spoke to Mike Newman, who explained that NIST had obtained all the steel it required.

Oh, so that is why they later claimed that the amount they got was not sufficient, and they needed to use computer simulations to determine the temperatures seen by the steel, since there was very little physical evidence of high temperatures on the actual steel. What are you smoking?

Newtons Bit

20th January 2008, 10:26 AM

Explosive blasts decay exponentially so one would not expect any columns to have been destroyed in the 1993 WTC bombing with the distance of the explosion and the surface area and strength of the columns.

However, one would think that tamping could be used to loosely direct the force of a wide but relatively light ribbon charge at close range to generate the force and create a large bending moment at the weld. This would be different from a shaped charge which would be used to highly focus the energy for cutting. Take a look at the chapter on explosives from a NAVSEA handbook that I provided.

You can equate different sized explosives with different distances from elements by

scaled distance = R / [W^(1/3)]
W = weight of explosive
R = distance from object

Let's take a bomb of 1500lbs planted 2 feet away from the column in the basement. The column is roughly 6 feet deep so the bomb is 5 feet away from the centerline of the column.

It has a scaled distance of 5/[1500^(1/3)] = 0.437

What size of explosive would be needed to meet this equivalent and non-lethal effect placed against the face of a 5 foot deep core column? Let's use a distance of 2.5 feet

0.437 = 2.5 / [W^(1/3)]

W^(1/3) = 5.722

W = 187lb. That's 187lb of explosives that still doesn't do anything. Of course this is for a non shape charged. A shape charge would be vastly different, but that requires serious prep time and leave effects that would be easily noticed, namely in that the locations were the columns were severed there would be blast scoring, etc. The only thing we see in the pictures is columns broken at their welds, or built up box columns that have dissociated at their longitudinal welds.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 10:31 AM

I will do the calculations to support my stated estimate. Do you want to tell me what column size we're dealing with (location of the charges)?

Why don't we both do all of the outer core columns on the 50th floor. That would consist of all of the 500 and 1000 rows and the end columns of the 600, 700, 800, and 900 rows. You can get the columns cross sections at

http://wtcmodel.wikidot.com/start

For consistency in both our calculations why don't we use a moment arm of 72 inches below the weld.

Do you know how to calculate the moment of inertia or section modulus of the weld? If you don't you can do it with a calculator here

http://www.engineering.com/calculators/properties_of_welds_treated_as_lines.htm

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 10:34 AM

You can equate different sized explosives with different distances from elements by

scaled distance = R / [W^(1/3)]
W = weight of explosive
R = distance from object

Let's take a bomb of 1500lbs planted 2 feet away from the column in the basement. The column is roughly 6 feet deep so the bomb is 5 feet away from the centerline of the column.

It has a scaled distance of 5/[1500^(1/3)] = 0.437

What size of explosive would be needed to meet this equivalent and non-lethal effect placed against the face of a 5 foot deep core column? Let's use a distance of 2.5 feet

0.437 = 2.5 / [W^(1/3)]

W^(1/3) = 5.722

W = 187lb. That's 187lb of explosives that still doesn't do anything. Of course this is for a non shape charged. A shape charge would be vastly different, but that requires serious prep time and leave effects that would be easily noticed, namely in that the locations were the columns were severed there would be blast scoring, etc. The only thing we see in the pictures is columns broken at their welds, or built up box columns that have dissociated at their longitudinal welds.

I thought it was clear that I was talking about charges placed right on the column. Why do you want to talk about something different?

Are you saying that a charge placed five to six feet below the weld on the column you showed the other day could not have had that damage caused by a charge placed directly on its surface?

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 10:34 AM

Oh, so that is why they later claimed that the amount they got was not sufficient, and they needed to use computer simulations to determine the temperatures seen by the steel, since there was very little physical evidence of high temperatures on the actual steel. What are you smoking?

When did NIST make this claim? Let's see your evidence.

DGM

20th January 2008, 10:40 AM

Why don't we both do all of the outer core columns on the 98th floor. That would consist of all of the 500 and 1000 rows and the end columns of the 600, 700, 800, and 900 rows. You can get the columns cross sections at

http://wtcmodel.wikidot.com/start

For consistency in both our calculations why don't we use a moment arm of 72 inches below the weld.

Do you know how to calculate the moment of inertia or section modulus of the weld? If you don't you can do it with a calculator here

http://www.engineering.com/calculators/properties_of_welds_treated_as_lines.htm
Sure!
Is RDX OK? Did you have a standoff in mind? What did you have in mind for a "tamping" or should we skip that?

einsteen

20th January 2008, 10:43 AM

I phoned NIST and spoke to Mike Newman, who explained that NIST had obtained all the steel it required.

I remember Jeff Hill called him also, it must be this mp3

http://www.shure.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=911calls&action=display&thread=1192748469

If I remember it well he said that the core failed first. I thought that I never understood NIST's story but this makes sense, the core should fail first.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:03 AM

How many photos of these columns were photographed and shown to the public?Strange how you say you've looked at photos of hundreds of columns, yet you can't show us one that shows any signs of the effects of explosives or incendiaries.

Sixth time, Major Tom: how many core columns were able to be matched with as-built locations in the collapse initiation zones? I know. Do you, Major Tom? You'd better, if you're going to keep raising this issue.

You've had days to look this up. It's YOUR issue. Answer the question now.Or are you, like Tony Szamboti, that afraid of reality and learning?

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:06 AM

I remember Jeff Hill called him also, it must be this mp3

http://www.shure.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=911calls&action=display&thread=1192748469

If I remember it well he said that the core failed first. I thought that I never understood NIST's story but this makes sense, the core should fail first.einsteen, why is it acceptable to you to run away from your claims, as you did in that WTC 7 thread, and to pick up elsewhere as if nothing had happened? Is that mature behavior? Are you, like Major Tom and Tony Szamboti, that afraid of reality?

What is scaring you 9/11 deniers so much?

WildCat

20th January 2008, 11:07 AM

I thought it was clear that I was talking about charges placed right on the column.
Except, of course, you have no evidence at all that there were any charges anywhere. And to do what you are suggesting would be quite the feat in a busy office building in use 24/7.

You're just wanking off on a fantasy.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:08 AM

Are you saying that a charge placed five to six feet below the weld on the column you showed the other day could not have had that damage caused by a charge placed directly on its surface?Show us where the blast damage occurred on that column, Tony Szamboti. No running, no hiding. Show us.

Or are you that afraid of reality?

lisabob2

20th January 2008, 11:08 AM

I have recalculated Bazant and Zhou's overload ratio with the result that progressive collapse is not predicted by the model. Please see the article:

http://www.cool-places.0catch.com/docs/Overload.pdf

Any constructive comments would be appreciated.
I wouldn't count on any "constructive comments" from this crowd, it seems any evidence that challenges their beliefs is either lies or made up by loony scientist, who are out to get our innocent goverment. imagine anybody wanting to catch our "leaders" in something illegal? they gotta be commies or socialist!!

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:08 AM

I remember Jeff Hill called him also, it must be this mp3

http://www.shure.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=911calls&action=display&thread=1192748469

If I remember it well he said that the core failed first. I thought that I never understood NIST's story but this makes sense, the core should fail first.

Imagine the sheer stupidity of an oaf who calls 10,000 pages of analysis, simulations, diagrams, photos, graphs, etc., a "bogus" report. Where are the scientists and engineers all over the world who have found errors in it? Why does an ignoramus think he can challenge a study conducted by a thousand serious researchers without understanding anything about science? Seriously, the evil movement you serve makes no headway because it insults everyone's intelligence.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:10 AM

I wouldn't count on any "constructive comments" from this crowd, it seems any evidence that challenges their beliefs is either lies or made up by loony scientist, who are out to get our innocent goverment. imagine anybody wanting to catch our "leaders" in something illegal? they gotta be commies or socialist!!

And your evidence for the existence of your imaginary, mathematically-impossible conspiracy is...?

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:13 AM

Oh, so that is why they later claimed that the amount they got was not sufficient, and they needed to use computer simulations to determine the temperatures seen by the steel, since there was very little physical evidence of high temperatures on the actual steel. What are you smoking?

We'll be waiting quite a while for your "evidence." In the meantime, try reading pgs. 86-89 in NIST NCSTAR 1, Chapter 6, "Learning From the Recovered Steel."

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:13 AM

Sure!
Is RDX OK? Did you have a standoff in mind? What did you have in mind for a "tamping" or should we skip that?

RDX is fine. I think the explosive would be placed very close if not right on the surface. I wouldn't use more than one inch of standoff distance. I do think any operation like this would tamp the explosive, so unless there is a reason not to, I would say the equivalent of one 50 lb. sand bag over the explosive sounds reasonable. This is only theoretical and I would like to see just how feasible it is so if we can skip how the tamping would be done we can get a feel for how much explosive it would take.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:14 AM

Why don't we both do all of the outer core columns on the 50th floor.In which tower did the collapses begin on the 50th floor? Right: neither.

Still waiting for you to show us how that smoke was perturbed – even a little bit – during the detonations that caused the south tower's east wall to continue bowing inward until it buckled, Tony.

Or do you believe in that multiple powerful explosives detonated and created no noise and no pressure wave at all? If so, please give us the formula. If not, please adjust your beliefs to match reality.

Fantasy or reality. Which will it be, mechanical engineer?

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:14 AM

We'll be waiting quite a while for your "evidence." In the meantime, try reading pgs. 86-89 in NIST NCSTAR 1, Chapter 6, "Learning From the Recovered Steel."

They also claim in the report that the amount of steel they got was too small a sample to be definitive. You should read the entire report.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:18 AM

In which tower did the collapses begin on the 50th floor? Right: neither.

Still waiting for you to show us how that smoke was perturbed – even a little bit – during the detonations that caused the south tower's east wall to continue bowing inward until it buckled, Tony.

Or do you believe in that multiple powerful explosives detonated and created no noise and no pressure wave at all? If so, please give us the formula. If not, please adjust your beliefs to match reality.

Fantasy or reality. Which will it be, mechanical engineer?

I guess you couldn't imagine that I chose an intermediate floor well below the collapse zone so that we could then scale either way from there. As for the collapse zone, I guess you aren't reading what I am saying about that. I believe the collapse could have been initiated with thermal weakening and then on lower floors explosives could be used in the manner being discussed to keep the collapse moving. I really need to ask myself why I am even answering you.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:19 AM

RDX is fine. I think the explosive would be placed very close if not right on the surface. I wouldn't use more than one inch of standoff distance.

Excellent. Here's your RDX. (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2873871255585611926#11m55s) Explain how this matches your fantasy. Do it.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:20 AM

Imagine the sheer stupidity of an oaf who calls 10,000 pages of analysis, simulations, diagrams, photos, graphs, etc., a "bogus" report. Where are the scientists and engineers all over the world who have found errors in it? Why does an ignoramus think he can challenge a study conducted by a thousand serious researchers without understanding anything about science? Seriously, the evil movement you serve makes no headway because it insults everyone's intelligence.

Were the conclusions of the NIST report written by a thousand serious researchers? The answer is no. It was only a much smaller number who wrote those conclusions. Your logic is poor Ron.

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:23 AM

I guess you couldn't imagine that I chose an intermediate floor well below the collapse zone so that we could then scale either way from there. As for the collapse zone, I guess you aren't reading what I am saying about that. I believe the collapse could have been initiated with thermal weakening and then on lower floors explosives could be used in the manner being discussed to keep the collapse moving. I really need to ask myself why I am even answering you.Ah, so now you're on to the Dylan Avery theory. The collapses didn't start with explosives but had to be "helped along" by them. Ever wonder how the evil perps knew the collapses would start where they did in the first place, Tony?

So there were explosives on the floor immediately below the first floor to collapse. Show us in the videos when the explosives detonated there.

Next, present your calculations that show the collapses should have been arrested.

Or are you just making this up as you go along, as you do with everything else? Found that Larry Silverstein quote yet, mechanical engineer Szamboti?

uk_dave

20th January 2008, 11:25 AM

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:26 AM

They also claim in the report that the amount of steel they got was too small a sample to be definitive. You should read the entire report.

Where does this claim appear?

DGM

20th January 2008, 11:28 AM

RDX is fine. I think the explosive would be placed very close if not right on the surface. I wouldn't use more than one inch of standoff distance. I do think any operation like this would tamp the explosive, so unless there is a reason not to, I would say the equivalent of one 50 lb. sand bag over the explosive sounds reasonable. This is only theoretical and I would like to see just how feasible it is so if we can skip how the tamping would be done we can get a feel for how much explosive it would take.
If the explosive was on or very near the column we would see major deformation of the column. The charge would need to be much further away, Say 2 to 3 feet in order to displace it without actually cutting it.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:31 AM

Were the conclusions of the NIST report written by a thousand serious researchers? The answer is no. It was only a much smaller number who wrote those conclusions. Your logic is poor Ron.

Your logic is nonexistent. Who among those researchers is speaking out and challenging the report's conclusions? Tell us the names of scientists and engineers from other countries who have discovered errors. Show something specific that NIST got wrong. Show us where the conclusions are contradicted by the data.

You have been reduced to incorporating the nonsensical fabrications of an agenda-driven ignoramus--thermite used to "heat-weaken" the steel, indeed!--to bolster your discredited case.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:35 AM

If the explosive was on or very near the column we would see major deformation of the column. The charge would need to be much further away, Say 2 to 3 feet in order to displace it without actually cutting it.

Not if it was a flat ribbon charge. The load would be spread and would not come near the shear strength of the steel. There is deformation of these columns although it is slight. That is what a wide charge would do while still applying the force to cause the high bending moment on the weld.

I am thinking that a 200 to 300 square inch flat plastic explosive charge would have been used.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:35 AM

They also claim in the report that the amount of steel they got was too small a sample to be definitive. You should read the entire report.

Neither of us has read all ten thousand pages. Mark, on the other hand, has. Perhaps he will tell us where NIST complains about having insufficient steel to conduct the tests properly.

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:37 AM

Not if it was a flat ribbon charge. The load would be spread. There is deformation of these columns although it is slight. That is what a wide charge would do while still applying the force to cause the high bending moment on the weld.

As Brent Blanchard constantly asks consiracy liars, where is the evidence of explosives? Where are the detonator caps? The bits of wiring?

Gravy

20th January 2008, 11:45 AM

Neither of us has read all ten thousand pages. Mark, on the other hand, has. Perhaps he will tell us where NIST complains about having insufficient steel to conduct the tests properly.No, this is good. I taught him that (okay, I had to beat him over the head with it repeatedly, but it shows he's capable of learning). However, he's only referring to the core columns that could be identified as being in the fire/collapse initiation areas, and NIST's point is that the moderate temperatures apparently experienced by those four (got it, Major Tom) identified core columns do not imply moderate temperatures for all core columns.

In the two buildings, there were 329 core columns (each three stories tall) traversing floors involved in fires. NIST has portions of four of these columns, and on average about half of each column was recovered. While these pieces allow some comparison of metal and paint condition with the predications of the fire model, the recovered steel represents less than one percent of all the core columns intersecting floors with fire. Thus, the forensic analysis indicating moderate temperature excursions in the recovered core columns does not, and cannot, give a picture of temperatures seen by the vast majority of the core columns. NCSTAR 1-3C, page xivi (PDF page 48)

Corsair 115

20th January 2008, 11:46 AM

I am thinking that a 200 to 300 square inch flat plastic explosive charge would have been used.Now you just need to find a way to prove your thinking is correct.

You have your theory; next up is for you to perform an experiment which will either verify or invalidate your theory. When can we expect to read the detailed parameters of your experiment?

einsteen

20th January 2008, 11:55 AM

einsteen, why is it acceptable to you to run away from your claims, as you did in that WTC 7 thread, and to pick up elsewhere as if nothing had happened? Is that mature behavior? Are you, like Major Tom and Tony Szamboti, that afraid of reality?

What is scaring you 9/11 deniers so much?
Where are you talking about buddy ? I just checked the forum and this thread only, I've more to do than check each thread (I'm even not interested in each thread) but I remember that wtc7 thread very well, I'll have a look soon.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 11:57 AM

Where does this claim appear?

NIST NCSTAR 1-3C pages xlv and xlvi. Have fun.

http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-3Cchaps.pdf

pomeroo

20th January 2008, 11:58 AM

No, this is good. I taught him that (okay, I had to beat him over the head with it repeatedly, but it shows he's capable of learning). However, he's only referring to the core columns that could be identified as being in the fire/collapse initiation areas, and NIST's point is that the moderate temperatures apparently experienced by those four (got it, Major Tom) identified core columns do not imply moderate temperatures for all core columns.

In other words, NIST contented itself with a cautious, conservative estimate of steel temperatures in the core columns. The agency bent over backwards to avoid extrapolating from small amounts of evidence and overstating its case, right?

Gravy

20th January 2008, 12:02 PM

Now you just need to find a way to prove your thinking is correct.

You have your theory; next up is for you to perform an experiment which will either verify or invalidate your theory. When can we expect to read the detailed parameters of your experiment?Well, his theory changes whenever he's questioned about it.

Just in the last couple of pages, Mr. Szamboti has claimed that the detonations could have been muffled. He took great offense when he thought he was being asked to point out when the detonations could be heard.

Yet in his paper "The Sustainability of the Controlled Demolition Hypothesis for the Destruction of the Twin Towers," which is posted at the JONES, he says this:

"Witnesses, photos, and taped audio from that day, have attested to molten metal, demolition rings, sliced steel, and sounds produced by explosions."

..."There is very credible witness testimony of seeing, hearing, and feeling explosions, in many areas of the towers, both before and during the collapses."

So somehow these "damped," small detonations, which cannot be detected by audio equipment*, were heard and felt by witnesses before and during the collapses!

And now Mr. Szamboti is claiming that the collapses may not have started with detonations, but with "thermal weakening," and the sound of the subsequent helper detonations was masked by the sound of the collapses...yet was clearly audible to witnesses!

But wait: there's more! Now "thermal weakening" started the collapses? Then why does he say this in his paper:

"The physical evidence for the third theory, controlled demolition, is due to the characteristics of the twin tower collapses. In one of his many writings on the subject of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. David Ray Griffin lists the eleven characteristics of controlled demolition, which both of the towers exhibited in their respective collapses.

Sudden Onset Dust Clouds Molten Steel Straight Down Horizontal Ejections Sliced Steel Almost Free-Fall Speed Sounds Produced by Explosions Demolition Rings Total Collapse Pulverization of Concrete and Other Materials

"The NIST report wants to tell us that it was the perimeter columns that buckled and caused the collapses. The report says this was due to their deflection and bowing, caused by fire affected sagging floor trusses pulling on them, and the central core itself sagging due to plasticity and creep. The probable collapse sequences, as hypothesized by the NIST report, were issued at a press conference in NYC in April 2005. That press release, which also has aircraft impact simulations and a slide show, is available here.

http://www.nist.gov:80/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_april0505.htm

It appears the press release and report want to say that the entire interior structure was sagging."

But now Mr. Szamboti is claiming that the collapse started by sagging!

But wait: there's more! In his December paper, co-authored by Frank Legge, Mr. Szamboti says that because the yield strength of steel increases as its degree of distortion caused by thermal weakening increases, the collapses shouldn't have happened at all!

But wait, there's more: in the earlier paper, Mr. Szamboti says this:

"It is instructive that the first visible signs of failure on the North Tower are when the antenna mast moves downward by ten to twelve feet before the perimeter roof line moves. This is indicative of the central core suddenly and completely failing first."

Sudden onset! Except, no, the antenna didn't fall first at all, as this video shows:

Cz6VxxVdXuA

Mr. Szamboti, please reconcile these remarkable contradictions!

ETA: *Or can they be detected by audio? I note that Mr. Szamboti writes, "Witnesses, photos, and taped audio from that day"

Okay, produce the taped audio with the – ahem! – damped detonations, Mr. Szamboti!

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave," indeed!

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 12:03 PM

In other words, NIST contented itself with a cautious, conservative estimate of steel temperatures in the core columns. The agency bent over backwards to avoid extrapolating from small amounts of evidence and overstating its case, right?

Baloney Ron. You just said a few posts back that they got all of the steel they needed. Well in the report it is obvious that they felt they didn't.

Additionally, they made the same type of statement with regard to perimeter columns also. See NIST NCSTAR 1-3C pages xlv and xlvi.

I think people like you who want to call themselves rationalists when making these types of arguments should consider a new handle. I think something along the lines of gulliblists might do.

DGM

20th January 2008, 12:05 PM

Not if it was a flat ribbon charge. The load would be spread and would not come near the shear strength of the steel. There is deformation of these columns although it is slight. That is what a wide charge would do while still applying the force to cause the high bending moment on the weld.

I am thinking that a 200 to 300 square inch flat plastic explosive charge would have been used.
Won't work. Most of your blast wave would be along the face of the column not perpendicular. You need to think about the blast wave propagating along the thickness of the charge not radiating out equally in all directions. What you describe would give you a nice black mark on the column and a big noise.

Tony Szamboti

20th January 2008, 12:12 PM

Well, his theory changes whenever he's questioned about it.

Just in the last couple of pages, Mr. Szamboti has claimed that the detonations could have been muffled. He took great offense when he thought he was being asked to point out when the detonations could be heard.

Yet in his paper "The Sustainability of the Controlled Demolition Hypothesis for the Destruction of the Twin Towers," which is posted at the JONES, he says this:

"Witnesses, photos, and taped audio from that day, have attested to molten metal, demolition rings, sliced steel, and sounds produced by explosions."

..."There is very credible witness testimony of seeing, hearing, and feeling explosions, in many areas of the towers, both before and during the collapses."

So somehow these "damped," small detonations, which cannot be detected by audio equipment, were heard and felt by witnesses before and during the collapses!

And now Mr. Szamboti is claiming that the collapses may not have started with detonations, but with "thermal weakening," and the sound of the subsequent helper detonations was masked by the sound of the collapses...yet was clearly audible to witnesses!

But wait: there's more! Now "thermal weakening" started the collapses? Then why does he say this in his paper:

"The physical evidence for the third theory, controlled demolition, is due to the characteristics of the twin tower collapses. In one of his many writings on the subject of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. David Ray Griffin lists the eleven characteristics of controlled demolition, which both of the towers exhibited in their respective collapses.

Sudden Onset Dust Clouds Molten Steel Straight Down Horizontal Ejections Sliced Steel Almost Free-Fall Speed Sounds Produced by Explosions Demolition Rings Total Collapse Pulverization of Concrete and Other Materials

"The NIST report wants to tell us that it was the perimeter columns that buckled and caused the collapses. The report says this was due to their deflection and bowing, caused by fire affected sagging floor trusses pulling on them, and the central core itself sagging due to plasticity and creep. The probable collapse sequences, as hypothesized by the NIST report, were issued at a press conference in NYC in April 2005. That press release, which also has aircraft impact simulations and a slide show, is available here.

http://www.nist.gov:80/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_april0505.htm

It appears the press release and report want to say that the entire interior structure was sagging."

But now Mr. Szamboti is claiming that the collapse started by sagging!

But wait: there's more! In his December paper, co-authored by Frank Legge, Mr. Szamboti says that because the yield strength of steel increases as its degree of distortion caused by thermal weakening increases, the collapses shouldn't have happened at all!

But wait, there's more: in the earlier paper, Mr. Szamboti says this:

"It is instructive that the first visible signs of failure on the North Tower are when the antenna mast moves downward by ten to twelve feet before the perimeter roof line moves. This is indicative of the central core suddenly and completely failing first."

Sudden onset! Except, no, the antenna didn't fall first at all, as this video shows:

Cz6VxxVdXuA

Mr. Szamboti, please reconcile these remarkable contradictions!

No Mark, I didn't say sagging. I said thermal weakening. You apparently think that has to be very slow and would be akin to sagging. I do not think the thermal weakening which would have been done in the fire affected areas was a slow process. In fact I think it happened in seconds and was masked by fires. This is entirely consistent with the core going down first, and pulling the perimeter columns inward.

uk_dave

20th January 2008, 12:16 PM

Realcddeal,

Was progressive collapse of the towers as described by NIST impossible?

ETA : I'll rephrase because the obvious retort will be that NIST cannot model the actual collapse.

Was progressive collapse from the impact damage and fires impossible?

Myriad

20th January 2008, 12:17 PM

I know that some rather intelligent people do post in this forum and in all fairness I would like to give you gentlemen a little time to show me that the entire basis of your argument is not simply belief in people you may consider "authorities" and "experts".

Considering that the "authorities" and "experts" in question are the same people who design and construct tall buildings, and inspect those designs and those buildings for safety, I must ask in return:

What is the evidentiary basis for doubting their expertise?

And, if you do indeed doubt that structural engineers know what they're talking about, then does the question not shift from "why did the buildings collapse" to "how in the world did towers that were designed, built, and inspected by know-nothing incompetents manage to stand for so long in the first place?"

If structural engineers don't know their stuff, then that alone is sufficient reason to expect buildings to unexpectedly collapse for no known reason from time to time. Why shouldn't we conclude that's what happened on 9/11?

Respectfully,
Myriad

Gravy

20th January 2008, 12:24 PM

No Mark, I didn't say sagging. I said thermal weakening. You apparently think that has to be very slow and would be akin to sagging. I do not think the thermal weakening which would have been done in the fire affected areas was a slow process. In fact I think it happened in seconds and was masked by fires. This is entirely consistent with the core going down first, and pulling the perimeter columns inward.

Oh, Tony! Deeper and deeper you dig! I refer you to your own paper,

9/11 and the Twin Towers: Sudden Collapse Initiation was Impossible (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/Sudden_collapse_initiation_impossible.pdf)

It appears therefore that the official concept of a free fall collapse of the upper portion
through the initiation storey, due to heat effects from fire, is a fantasy. If the temperature
did become high enough for collapse to occur it could not have happened in the observed
manner. In particular it could not have been sudden and thus could not have produced
the velocity, and hence the momentum and kinetic energy, upon which the official story
depends for the second stage of collapse. In contrast, all observations are in accord with
the use of explosives in a timed sequence. Please explain this contradiction!

Next,

1) How was this thermal weakening, which occurred in seconds in the fire and aircraft impact zones, accomplished???

And again:

2) Please reconcile your claims about the detonations being clearly audible both by witnesses and on audio, versus your current claim that they were damped and inaudible.

3) Please point out in the video I just posted exactly when you see the antenna falling 10-12 feet before the exterior wall. Give me the minutes and seconds when the antenna drop starts.

They're your claims and your contradictions, Tony. Back them up or adjust your beliefs to accord with reality.