@ wrs - my reply

[Halophyte]

(wrs) I thought I would put this out there for Halophyte. It's my own writeup and calculations about the lack of sufficient energy in a gravitational collapse to produce a progressive collpase of the WTC towers. What is really funny is that the NIST report doesn't address the collapse, it only addresses factors leading up to the collapse so it never substantiates the progressive collapse theory with facts, data or even a model.

Here is my writeup which was done about a year ago:

FEMA Numbers Contradict Claim on Collapse Dynamics

In it's report on the construction of the WTC Towers and their collapse FEMA makes the following statement in their report from Section 2.2.1.5

“Construction of WTC 1 resulted in the storage of more than 4 x 1011 joules of potential energy over the 1,368-foot height of the structure. Of this, approximately 8 x 109 joules of potential energy were stored in the upper part of the structure, above the impact floors, relative to the lowest point of impact. Once collapse initiated, much of this potential energy was rapidly converted into kinetic energy. As the large mass of the collapsing floors above accelerated and impacted on the floors below, it caused an immediate progressive series of floor failures, punching each in turn onto the floor below, accelerating as the sequence progressed.”


First lets make an educated guess at both the mass and the velocity of the upper floors in WTC1. The FEMA report says the upper 20 floors contained 8x10**9 Joules of energy which if we take an average height for those 20 floors of (1368 + 1102)/2 = 1235ft or 375m. Gravitational acceleration is 9.8m/s. To calculate the Mass of the upper 20 floors we can use the relationship between PE and mass as follows:

PE = mgh and solving for m gives

m = PE/gh

Substituting the FEMA values and known constants we get

m = (8x10**9)/(375*9.8) = 2.176 x 10**6 kg

In order to compute the mass of the remaining 90 floors we do the same thing and arrive at an average height of 167m which gives us a mass of 2.39 x 10**8 kg or basically 100 times the mass of the top 20 floors. So actually we have 1% of the total mass of the structure collapsing on the remaining 99%. ( Logical fallacy #1 – we have 1% of the total mass/kinetic energy of the upper floors collapsing on 1 (one) floor [the next level down] ) , we have It seems a little hard to imagine that this could cause a total collapse but lets study the matter further using the numbers provided by FEMA.

When we look at the statement in the FEMA report concerning the potential energy being converted to kinetic energy it would seem that we are dealing with a very large quantity, i.e. 8 Billion Joules. However, the KE of a falling object is given by the expression

KE = ½ mv**2

When the mass of the upper floors first begins to move it is accelerated at a uniform rate of 9.8m/s. This means that the velocity at the end of one second would be 9.8m/s but it isn't the initial velocity, that is clearly 0. So we must calculate what the final velocity is after traversing one floors worth of distance or approximately 4m. We can use the relationship between position and acceleration to find the velocity after traversing 4m as:

v**2 = 2as where a is acceleration due to gravity and s is distance travelled

v**2 = 2*9.8*4 = 78.4 and taking the square root gives v = 8.85m/s. Now we are ready to compute the KE of the upper 20 floors after traversing the 4m to reach the first undamaged floor below. Plugging into the equation above yields 8.5 x 10**7 Joules or 85 million Joules of Kinetic Energy spread across the area of floorspace of the building which was 3972 square meters or nearly an acre. Now that we have that energy we would like to compare it to the energy that FEMA has allocated to the causes of the collapse.

STOP – ( Logical Fallacy #2 - the information given in the section below about impact energy of the aircraft is separate from the kinetic energy of collapse. Two separate equations. Lets stick to the dynamics of the collapse.)


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The first energy source that affected the structure was the collision from the plane which we know was a 767 with an unknown velocity. However from the Boeing site we find that the maximum takeoff weight was 179,170 kg and the crusing speed was 530mph. We don't want to estimate a greater mass or speed in this case because we know the buildings withstood this impact and so therefore we want to minimize or estimate of the impact energy of the plane in order to be conservative concerning our estimates of minimum collapse energy. So estimating that the plane had only 10,000 gallons and the maximum capacity is 24,000 gallons we subtract 40,000 kg from the mass of the plane.

The passenger load was also only about 1/3 of capacity and assuming a passenger plus baggage weight of 200lbs each. We will generously subtract another 15,000 kg from the mass of the plane. So we have a plane mass of roughly 125,000 kg.

The next component of concern is the velocity of the plane. Now the govt has estimated a very high velocity for the impact on WTC-1 of 494mph. This is fine for estimating a large energy of impact but it one desires to minimize the impact energy then we would like a lower impact speed. A lower estimate from another source provided an impact speed of 275mph which is roughly 98m/s. So at the lower velocity we compute an impact energy of 5.25 x 10**8 Joules. If we use the government speed we get 3.4 x 10**9 Joules which is much greater.

Now comparing the energy at jet impact to the energy from the upper 20 floors we see that even our lower number of 525m Joules is far larger than 85m Joules of the upper 20 floors at 8.85m/s. Now one thing we have to consider about the energy from the airplane impact is that it was spread over an area that covered 4 floors so dividing the lower number by four gives us an impact energy of roughly 131m Joules on the low end and 975m Joules on the upper end. These energies are still larger so it is clear the building was able to absorb on a per-floor basis, far more energy than would be contained in the upper 20 stories collapsing.

In looking for a better analysis of the energy distribution on impact I found this article at

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-47343.html

This article speculates that 56% of the impact energy went into damaging the columns in the core. It unfortunately doesn't say how many floors of columns were assumed to be damaged but one would guess that at least two floors worth of columns were damaged and this article estimates that 24 of the 47 columns were damaged. So taking 56% of their estimate and dividing it by two leaves us with 1.07 x 10**9 Joules of energy absorbed by the core columns on two floors and yet that wasn't enough to cause a collpase. If we take our lower estimated speed and use the 56% number over two floors we get 1.47 x 10**8 or 147m Joules which is still 73% more energy than the upper 20 floors would contain at 8.85m/s.


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Continue discussion about collapse;


We can end this analysis right here because (You do not want to talk about the kinetic energy of the 4 meter drop of the upper building mass onto the next level ?) we know that there wasn't enough energy in the impact to cause a collapse and we would expect that after the fires weakened the four impact floors that they had added even more energy. In fact, the FEMA report estimates that 1.15 x 10**9 W were produced by the fire in WTC 1. Allowing for 85 minutes of burn time and one half of this energy vented out of the building, we still get an additional 48 Billion Joules of energy. In order not to confuse this any further, I believe it's easy to see that the top 20 floors didn't contain enough energy to collapse even the next floor with generous assumptions.

(Logical Fallacy #3 - By YOUR calculations –

“v**2 = 2*9.8*4 = 78.4 and taking the square root gives v = 8.85m/s. Now we are ready to compute the KE of the upper 20 floors after traversing the 4m to reach the first undamaged floor below. Plugging into the equation above yields 8.5 x 10**7 Joules or 85 million Joules of Kinetic Energy spread across the area of floorspace of the building which was 3972 square meters or nearly an acre."

In case you didn’t know, the minimum static load factor for a single floor of the towers (or any building) is x4. We’ll use YOUR calculations again -

“To calculate the Mass of the upper 20 floors we can use the relationship between PE and mass as follows:

PE = mgh and solving for m gives
m = PE/gh
Substituting the FEMA values and known constants we get
m = (8x10**9)/(375*9.8) = 2.176 x 10**6 kg “

Okay, we got a mass of 10**6 kg falling 4 meters (your estimate) onto a single floor that is 1/20th the mass of the weight impacting it from above ….. and you expect me to believe that this does not exceed the static load limits of the next floor down by order of magnitude ?

I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.

Moreover, in a collision between two masses there is always kinetic energy lost in heat and deformation unless the collision is perfectly elastic. (Now I know why you got hot when I suggested Elastic Dynamics. Don't want to go there eh ? .... The Journal of Engineering Mechanics ASCEF - http://www3.tam.uiuc.edu/news/200109wtc/) from the government estimates we have here, we can conclude with reasonable certainty that it would require the upper 20 floors collapsing to contain greater than 1.07 x 10**9 Joules of energy in order to even consider any subsequent collapse. ( By who’s calculations ? What is the maximum static load of floors below ? Why do you leave out this important information in your calculations ? Why not calculate static load limits ? I think I know why. ) This would require a velocity of 31m/s which would require that the collapse have progressed by 50m before impact which is 12 floors and anyone with eyes can see that there wasn't that much open space to fall through. Now if we take the more generous 147m Joules and compute the fall distance in the same fashion we get 11.6m/s and a drop distance of 7m which is far more reasonable.

(Logical fallacy #4 - No calculations of individual floor load limits. )

To take this another step further, we can consider the columns in the core of the buildings. The amount of force required to cause a column to buckle is given by an equation called Eulers Formula and is given as

F = EI*pi**2/L**2

In this case E is the Youngs Modulus of the material, I is the moment of inertia for the beam type and L is the length of the beam. We are assuming what is called a simply pinned column in this case, which is what the colums on the interior floors of the building are.

There are several types of columns in the WTC core according to the NIST report on page 26 of chapter two. The largest on the floors above the impact zone are W14x730 which weigh 730 lbs per foot and are erected in 39 foot lengths so a single column weighs roughly 14 tons and spans three floors. There were four of these around the outside perimiter of the core and probably ( probably ?) 4 in the center. The following table describes the force needed to initially deflect the column and the energy consumed in order to deflect it one meter.

W14x730 126Million Newtons bending force ==> 126 Million Joules per meter bent
W14x219 23.5 Million Newtons bending force ==> 23.5 Million Joules per meter bent
W14x61 6.4 Million Newtons bending force ==> 6.4 Million Joules per meter bent


Let’s reverse the order of the beams at smallest, in order to calculate the energy imparted on the first column section as the collapse began.

On the 90th floor where collapse begins the energy is – YOUR calculations again –

“20 floors after traversing the 4m to reach the first undamaged floor below. Plugging into the equation above yields 8.5 x 10**7 Joules or 85 million Joules of Kinetic Energy” imparted on (8) W14x61 that requires “6.4 Million Newtons bending force each ==> 6.4 Million Joules per meter bent”

So, 8 x 6.4 = a total of 51.2 Joules per meter bent

(Logical Fallacy #5 - IF you had a clue about vertical support columns you would realize the force required to bend a beam by compression is REDUCED BY ITS LENGTH. Because a column is 39 feet long we DO NOT MULTIPLY this figure by its length. But instead, you use the compression load data measured per/m - this greatly distorts the calculated strength of each of the columns.)

(Logical Fallacy #6 – Vertical columns do not need to bend their entire length to cause catastrophic fastener failure a deflection of < 5% will strip fasteners, this limit is severally restricted by span.)

(Logical Fallacy #7 – You do not address vertical support fastener tensile load limits.)

(Logical Fallacy #8 – You do not address pin/bolt fastener shear load limits.)

(Logical Fallacy #9 – You do not address lateral truss support load limits.)

(Logical Fallacy #10 – Your model of the collapse function is based on the assumption of energy imparted on the total area of an evenly loaded box girder frame – the reality of the twin tower design was - the large spans of floor trussing between center column and outside columns had to absorbed the kinetic energy of the floors above without vertical support. (As accounted by witnesses – “it pealed like a banana as it fell.”)




These towers had serious design flaws that drastically contributed to the collapse.

They were not designed to take this kind of abuse.

This is why few structural engineers will address the real issues of the building design, prolly the real reason it was “cleaned up so fast”.

The insurance underwriters for structural integrity did not want to pay their portion of the financial burden after collapse. Potentially, billions of dollars in insurace losses. The government and taxpayer foot the entire bill instead.

People say there’s a cover-up going on – I say, hell yes there is ! But it ain’t what you think, it’s the damn insurance corporations and paid-off structural engineers keeping tight lips. That's why there was a structural information black-out.

Anyone who questions the structural integrity of those buildings will be under fire by the corp giants. The authors of the show NOVA have been criticized by industry professionals when they addressed the buildings design that contributed to the collapse.

This is a fvcking embarrassment to the industry, to my tradesmen and to the men who built those towers.

We know exactly what the score is .. that's why I'm so pissed off at the disinformation CT authors and websites.

I know who's cutting their pay checks, assisting with grants and greasing the wheels ...


.

[Halophyte]

Now we'll look at the other section of your windy diatribe.

(wrs) - The first energy source that affected the structure was the collision from the plane which we know was a 767 with an unknown velocity. However from the Boeing site we find that the maximum takeoff weight was 179,170 kg and the crusing speed was 530mph. We don't want to estimate a greater mass or speed in this case because we know the buildings withstood this impact and so therefore we want to minimize or estimate of the impact energy of the plane in order to be conservative concerning our estimates of minimum collapse energy. So estimating that the plane had only 10,000 gallons and the maximum capacity is 24,000 gallons we subtract 40,000 kg from the mass of the plane.

The passenger load was also only about 1/3 of capacity and assuming a passenger plus baggage weight of 200lbs each. We will generously subtract another 15,000 kg from the mass of the plane. So we have a plane mass of roughly 125,000 kg.

The next component of concern is the velocity of the plane. Now the govt has estimated a very high velocity for the impact on WTC-1 of 494mph. This is fine for estimating a large energy of impact but it one desires to minimize the impact energy then we would like a lower impact speed. A lower estimate from another source provided an impact speed of 275mph which is roughly 98m/s. So at the lower velocity we compute an impact energy of 5.25 x 10**8 Joules. If we use the government speed we get 3.4 x 10**9 Joules which is much greater.

Now comparing the energy at jet impact to the energy from the upper 20 floors we see that even our lower number of 525m Joules is far larger than 85m Joules of the upper 20 floors at 8.85m/s. (BUT that wasn’t enough to contribute to the eventual collapse ?) Now one thing we have to consider about the energy from the airplane impact is that it was spread over an area that covered 4 floors so dividing the lower number by four gives us an impact energy of roughly 131m Joules on the low end and 975m Joules on the upper end. These energies are still larger so it is clear the building was able to absorb on a per-floor basis, far more energy than would be contained in the upper 20 stories collapsing. (BRILLIANT ! What the hell does that have to do with NOT having ENOUGH ENERGY to contribute to collapse ?)

In looking for a better analysis of the energy distribution on impact I found this article at

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/ar...p/t-47343.html

This article speculates that 56% of the impact energy went into damaging the columns in the core. It unfortunately doesn't say how many floors of columns were assumed to be damaged but one would guess (You’re assuming too) that at least two floors worth of columns were damaged and this article estimates that 24 of the 47 columns were damaged. So taking 56% of their estimate and dividing it by two leaves us with 1.07 x 10**9 Joules of energy absorbed by the core columns on two floors and yet that wasn't enough to cause a collpase. (No chit mon, I saw it too) If we take our lower estimated speed and use the 56% number over two floors we get 1.47 x 10**8 or 147m Joules which is still 73% more energy than the upper 20 floors would contain at 8.85m/s. (And that’s your logic to demonstrate it WASN”T enough energy ?!?! - WTF ?)

We can end this analysis right here (You wish) because we know that there wasn't enough energy in the impact to cause a collapse (Yeah right, you just proved there was enough energy in the last two paragraphs.) and we would expect that after the fires weakened the four impact floors that they had added even more energy. In fact, the FEMA report estimates that 1.15 x 10**9 W were produced by the fire in WTC 1. Allowing for 85 minutes of burn time and one half of this energy vented out of the building, (Logical Fallacy – That’s complete if-so-facto guess – a common thread throughout your self absorbed diatribe.) we still get an additional 48 Billion Joules of energy. In order not to confuse this any further, I believe it's easy to see that the top 20 floors didn't contain enough energy to collapse even the next floor with generous assumptions. (Damn right it "your belief" cause your logic switches back and forth from energy of impact to energy of the collapsing floors.)

Make up your feable mind what, which is it ?



YOUR WORDS, YOUR MATH - "Now comparing the energy at jet impact to the energy from the upper 20 floors we see that even our lower number of 525m Joules is far larger than 85m Joules of the upper 20 floors at 8.85m/s.

WTF ? Who are you bullshitting ? You just caught yourself in your own pile of crap.

YOUR WORDS, YOUR MATH - "which is still 73% more energy than the upper 20 floors would contain at 8.85m/s."



Why are you comparing energy of crash impact vs energy of tower floors @ a 4 meter fall ? They're two completely different load variables that effect the building in two SEPERATE ways.

That's why there was an IMPACT (first, energy transfer) and much later there was a COLLAPSE (second energy transfer) ...... Duh

Why do you ASSUME loss of heat by a factor of 50% but are not willing to calculate radiant heat loss in an area that's essentially flat as a pancake ? (floor area/floor height)




Don't slither off.

I'm ain't done with you yet ….


.

[Dude]

Why are you comparing energy of crash impact vs energy of tower floors @ a 4 meter fall ? They're two completely different load variables that effect the building in two SEPERATE ways.

That's why there was an IMPACT (first, energy transfer) and much later there was a COLLAPSE (second energy transfer) ...... Duh


That's where I saw the first problem myself, KE vs. PE, and trying to equate things that have nothing to do with each other. I felt like an idiot when everyone kept saying that it makes perfect sense. It was making me feel that my education costs would have been better served by buying PM :banghead: .

[wrs]

There are no logical fallacies, it is you that makes the horrendous mistake right off the bat when you say:

( Logical fallacy #1 – we have 1% of the total mass/kinetic energy of the upper floors collapsing on 1 (one) floor [the next level down] )

In fact your statement is wrong. Each floor of the building is part of a three storey unit. This building was constructed in three floor increments so that columns were three floors in height as each section was constructed. You can go check the articles on the construction of the building for proof of this statement. The columns themselves were bolted and welded together on each end in order to act as a unit (this can be seen in the picture below where there are 22 bolts on each side of the column at the connection points). For this reason we can treat the bending analysis of a single section as a simply pinned column. In a collapse from above, the force of the upper floors is going to be downwardly directed to the columns beneath it. This is the design of the building and it remained that way even after it was damaged although some load shifting no doubt occurred.

Logical Fallacy #2 - the information given in the section below about impact energy of the aircraft is separate from the kinetic energy of collapse. Two separate equations. Lets stick to the dynamics of the collapse.

Completely missed the point did you? The point being that the building structure withstood the dynamic application of 3.1 Billion Joules of energy without collapsing, what is 85m Joules going to do that an amount 36 times greater did not do?


Now as to your editing my writing and interspersing your irrelevant comments into it in order to confuse the issue, I would suggest you write your own claims up separately and address my claims instead of trying to confuse the reader with what you wrote interspersed into what I wrote. You obviously still have not grasped the concept here, the fact is that the pancaking floor collapse doesn't apply to the core of the building. According to that conjecture, the connections of the floor joists at the core were severed at each level. That means the core remained intact because it had to provide the resistance for the joints to break otherwise it would have to fall as well. The fact of the collapse is that the core did collapse completely and in fact, the beams were horribly disfigured as can be seen in this picture

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/docs/image5.jpg

Halophyte, all you have done is intersperse a lot of cursing and self-righteous gibberish in to my analysis without doing a single calculation of your own. You have claimed my calculations show the opposite of what I say they do but you have yet to do a single calculation of your own. Now as to your claim about the bending force I computed using Eulers relation, here is what you said:

(Logical Fallacy #5 - IF you had a clue about vertical support columns you would realize the force required to bend a beam by compression is REDUCED BY ITS LENGTH. Because a column is 39 feet long we DO NOT MULTIPLY this figure by its length. But instead, you use the compression load data measured per/m - this greatly distorts the calculated strength of each of the columns.)


No it's you that doesn't have a clue. The computation involves the moment of inertia I which incorporates the length of the column. The point you make has nothing to do with the computation of the force required to bend the colum. Those computations were made for A36 steel using an industry standard Youngs Modulus and the Moment of Inertia from industry standard tables. Now as to reversing the computations, it doesn't matter what order you use, there were at least 8 of the W14x730s and an unknown combination of the smaller ones. The NIST documentation isn't sufficient to determine precisely what the column distribution is but it's pretty obvious that if you assume 8 large ones and then take the remaining 36 to be the smaller ones, you still require 219 Million Joules to bend those by one meter.

Now as to your conclusions, let me take them apart because they are scurrilous and false:

These towers had serious design flaws that drastically contributed to the collapse.

This is a totally and completely unsubstantiated accusation, find the flaw and prove it existed. This is the kind of nonsense that gives Engineering a bad name. To imagine that Engineers wouldn't overdesign this kind of building is just sheer ignorance of Engineering. You obviously aren't an Engineer or you wouldn't be making such a statement. If you are an Engineer, you are a bad one because you haven't backed up a single one of your statements with any calculations.

They were not designed to take this kind of abuse.


Again, utter nonsense and completely contradictory to the known facts. The buildings were designed to withstand an impact from a fully loaded 707 and proved that capability by not collapsing after the planes impacted them. The other abuse would have been the fires and there again, you are wrong. The buildings were designed to withstand much hotter fires than what they experienced and for several hours, not 56 minutes. They in fact did so in 1975 as per the design. The fires that resulted from this impact were shorter in duration and less hot than what the buildings were designed for.

Given these facts, the undamaged floors below the impact should have been able to take similar abuse without collapsing as well. The addition of 85 million Joules of energy as a result of a local collapse would in no way lead to a global collapse of the type we saw. Moreover, any local collapse that occurred would slow down on impact with each floor below as it transmitted the KE of the falling mass into the bending, breaking and buckling of the beams and subsequent connection points. The result would be that the collapse would run out of energy before it could continue for more than a few floors. You can take the building in Madrid as a good case in point.

This is why few structural engineers will address the real issues of the building design, prolly the real reason it was “cleaned up so fast”.


This is an amazing statement that completely contradicts the known facts. In fact the Structural Engineering community at large was not allowed near ground zero. It wasn't the Structural Engineering community that cleaned it up so fast, it was Rudy Guliani and the Federal Government. The Structural Engineering community, if my two SE friends are a good slice, don't look into the problem more becuase they are too busy paying their mortgages. Moreover, if they come out saying that the govt story is wrong, then they have to start defending themselves for disagreeing with the govt from whom they obtain their licnese to practice. As long as the govt can get a few paid shills to lie for it to the public, it's difficult for any but a few very brave and independent people to risk their careers to disagree.

People say there’s a cover-up going on – I say, hell yes there is ! But it ain’t what you think, it’s the damn insurance corporations and paid-off structural engineers keeping tight lips. That's why there was a structural information black-out.

Anyone who questions the structural integrity of those buildings will be under fire by the corp giants. The authors of the show NOVA have been criticized by industry professionals when they addressed the buildings design that contributed to the collapse.


In fact the insurance companies did pay Silverstein for the buildings and there was no design flaw shown to exist. The reason for the secrecy of the drawings is because if we had the real core design, it could be analyzed for it's susceptibility to the conjectured collapse and it would be easy to show that the collapse mechanism claimed by the govt is a complete fabrication.

Sorry Halophyte, you are the one with the diatribe, not me. You are the one using invective and cursing not I....................

Dude,

Do you have any idea what you are talking about? I doubt it.

[Dude]

Doubt what you want wrs. I gain nothing by trying to alter your opinion. I will, however, reserve the right to my own opinion that you are oversimplifying, comparing and calculating inconsistently, and that you turn pages in your text books to find formulas with the given values listed in front of you so that you can do what we used to call plug and chug.

[wrs]

You are entitled to your opinion but since you don't like my formulas, why don't you check out Dr. Jones paper at www.st911.org, he is a PhD in physics while I only have a BS and a Masters in Engineering...................

By the way, he agrees with me on the conservation of momentum, it's a basic principle that must come into play when two objects collide as in the top 20 floors falling onto the bottom 90 floors or the 767 crashing into the building. In both cases, one object must transfer it's momentum to the the other and either come to a halt or cause the other object to move. Apparently the 3.1 Billion Joules of KE contained in the plane weren't enough to move the building and so the plane transferred all it's momentum to the building by deforming and breaking steel and destroying itself in the process. As to the upper 20 floors, well they contained only 1/36th of the KE in the plane but somehow we are to believe that after they hit the next undamaged floor below them, they not only didn't slow down, they accelerated....................

Hmmmmmmmmm, you want to explain that to me?

[Dude]

So you are saying that the collapse started with the top floor falling on the one below, falling on the one below that, and so on. Is this what you are first assuming?

My apologies if I sounded derogatory earlier. If you have an MS in engineering from a quality school, I will have to recheck my own thought process.

[Ponce Cuba]

That's where I saw the first problem myself, KE vs. PE, and trying to equate things that have nothing to do with each other. I felt like an idiot when everyone kept saying that it makes perfect sense. It was making me feel that my education costs would have been better served by buying PM :banghead: .

Lol Dude, that's what I did and for that I am better off.....the so called "education" is nothing more than a training bra to shape you into their way of thinking and not freely like I do.

You can place 1,000 professors with their Phd and XyZ on line with their theories but to me is more matter of adding 2 + 2 than trying to figure the velocity, tensile strenght and so on.

[wrs]

I am allowing that just for arguments sake. What I am saying is that once we allow that there was an initial collapse of the top 20 floors, they collapsed downward onto the 90 floors below them, this was so in the case of the North Tower but not the South Tower. Now assuming that the top 20 floors of the North Tower did collapse straight down, which we can see they did, then we have to assume an initial free-fall distance prior to them hitting the undamaged floors below. My analysis included two cases, that there was only 13 feet or one floor that the upper 20 fell through or that there was about one and a half floors or 21ft. In both cases, the KE of the upper floors was more than an order of magnitude less than the KE of the plane when it impacted the buildings and it failed to cause a collapse. What I am asking is how this greatly reduced amount of energy caused such a complete and utter collapse.

Im also asking how in the world can those top 20 floors accelerate while transferring all their momentum to the floors below them if no additional energy is available beyond gravity? Keep in mind, the KE of those floors is being used to deform, bend and buckle the steel of the floor directly beneath them in order to provoke another collapse. The bending, buckling and breaking consumes both time and energy. Thus, the speed of the upper floors shouldn't increase after impact with the floors below, it should decrease because KE=1/2mv**2. The mass of the upper floors hasn't changed after the impact and if it's KE is reduced by the destruction they wreaked on the floor below them, why don't we see them stop or slow down at any point in the process??????????

[Halophyte]

wrs - There are no logical fallacies, it is you that makes the horrendous mistake right off the bat when you say:

Quote:
( Logical fallacy #1 – we have 1% of the total mass/kinetic energy of the upper floors collapsing on 1 (one) floor [the next level down] )

In fact your statement is wrong. Each floor of the building is part of a three storey unit. This building was constructed in three floor increments so that columns were three floors in height as each section was constructed. You can go check the articles on the construction of the building for proof of this statement. The columns themselves were bolted and welded together on each end in order to act as a unit (this can be seen in the picture below where there are 22 bolts on each side of the column at the connection points). For this reason we can treat the bending analysis of a single section as a simply pinned column. (You might but I can't - the floor truss spanned across each individual floor level, connected to the vertical columns at each end that's SHEAR POINT for each floor level, not the vertical column length - the force of collapse was vectored downwards effecting SHEAR LIMITS of truss end pinning.) In a collapse from above, the force of the upper floors is going to be downwardly directed to the columns beneath it. (Bullshit, you're talking about STATIC LOAD not DYNAMIC LOAD of collapse - sell it to the CT believers, I'm not buying.) This is the design of the building and it remained that way even after it was damaged although some load shifting no doubt occurred.

Quote:
Logical Fallacy #2 - the information given in the section below about impact energy of the aircraft is separate from the kinetic energy of collapse. Two separate equations. Lets stick to the dynamics of the collapse.

Completely missed the point did you? ( (What that your analysis refuses to separate two separate events of energy transfer ? ) The point being that the building structure withstood the dynamic application of 3.1 Billion Joules of energy without collapsing, what is 85m Joules going to do that an amount 36 times greater did not do? [B](Another blind mistake on your part – the impact vector was HORIZONTAL the collapse vector was VERTICAL. More stupid spin. And don’t try playing the “the vertical static load factors were higher than the horizontal limits – it doesn’t cut it when you consider truss/fastener failure – but that’s part of the Elastic Dynamic Analysis that you got call hot and bothered over.)


Now as to your editing my writing and interspersing your irrelevant comments into it in order to confuse the issue, I would suggest you write your own claims up separately and address my claims instead of trying to confuse the reader with what you wrote interspersed into what I wrote. You obviously still have not grasped the concept here, the fact is that the pancaking floor collapse doesn't apply to the core of the building. (And you still have not grasped the fact that this building had over 50% of its truss framing/floor area WITHOUT CENTER SUPPORT COLUMNS.)

According to that conjecture, the connections of the floor joists at the core were severed at each level . (You’re warming up) That means the core remained intact because it had to provide the resistance for the joints to break otherwise it would have to fall as well. . (Here’s a news flash – the center support columns DID FALL, lateral forces of the floors pulling on a horizontal axis that took them down. They're max load design is for a vertical axis, not horizontal. Watch the video, you can see the outer columns being deflected as much as 30 degrees before they break off at their fasteners.) The fact of the collapse is that the core did collapse completely and in fact, the beams were horribly disfigured as can be seen in this picture (Brilliant deduction.)


Halophyte, all you have done is intersperse a lot of cursing and self-righteous gibberish in to my analysis without doing a single calculation of your own. You have claimed my calculations show the opposite of what I say they do but you have yet to do a single calculation of your own. Now as to your claim about the bending force I computed using Eulers relation, here is what you said: . (I don’t need to change the batteries in my TI calculator to see your over your head. I have assumed that ALL YOUR CALCULATIONS OF ENERGY SUMS ARE CORRECT ! It’s your application of those totals that stretches the imagination.)

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(Logical Fallacy #5 - IF you had a clue about vertical support columns you would realize the force required to bend a beam by compression is REDUCED BY ITS LENGTH. Because a column is 39 feet long we DO NOT MULTIPLY this figure by its length. But instead, you use the compression load data measured per/m - this greatly distorts the calculated strength of each of the columns.)

No it's you that doesn't have a clue. The computation involves the moment of inertia I which incorporates the length of the column. (And switch back to horizontal loads - I wish you would make up your mind.) The point you make has nothing to do with the computation of the force required to bend the colum. (Here we go again.) Those computations were made for A36 steel using an industry standard Youngs Modulus and the Moment of Inertia from industry standard tables. Now as to reversing the computations, it doesn't matter what order you use, there were at least 8 of the W14x730s and an unknown combination of the smaller ones. The NIST documentation isn't sufficient to determine precisely what the column distribution is but it's pretty obvious that if you assume 8 large ones and then take the remaining 36 to be the smaller ones, you still require 219 Million Joules to bend those by one meter.

Now as to your conclusions, let me take them apart because they are scurrilous and false:

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These towers had serious design flaws that drastically contributed to the collapse.

This is a totally and completely unsubstantiated accusation, find the flaw and prove it existed. This is the kind of nonsense that gives Engineering a bad name. To imagine that Engineers wouldn't overdesign this kind of building is just sheer ignorance of Engineering. You obviously aren't an Engineer or you wouldn't be making such a statement. If you are an Engineer, you are a bad one because you haven't backed up a single one of your statements with any calculations.

(The “open air” floor design of the towers was an undeniable contributing factor in the propagation of the transfered energy of collapse. But you don’t want to do the math because you damn well know the collapse of those 20 floors above was beyond the load limits of individual floor trusses. The flaw in the tower’s design was THEY WERE NOT DESIGNED to be abused in this fashion. They are not AIRCRAFT RUNWAYS. But there are a lot of folks out there like you who still hold onto the MYTH that these towers were designed to take the forces of horizontal impact, uncontrolled fire without benefit of a fire suppression system, shattered insulation coatings on floor trusses and momentum of sequential collapse of 20 floors.)

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They were not designed to take this kind of abuse.

Again, utter nonsense and completely contradictory to the known facts. The buildings were designed to withstand an impact from a fully loaded 707 and proved that capability by not collapsing after the planes impacted them. (Brilliantly obvious.) The other abuse would have been the fires and there again, you are wrong. The buildings were designed to withstand much hotter fires than what they experienced and for several hours, not 56 minutes. They in fact did so in 1975 as per the design. The fires that resulted from this impact were shorter in duration and less hot than what the buildings were designed for.

Given these facts, the undamaged floors below the impact should have been able to take similar abuse without collapsing as well. The addition of 85 million Joules of energy as a result of a local collapse would in no way lead to a global collapse of the type we saw. (As long as you conveniently leave out ALL the other factors leading to structural failure.)

Moreover, any local collapse that occurred would slow down on impact with each floor below as it transmitted the KE of the falling mass into the bending, breaking and buckling of the beams and subsequent connection points. (As long as you leave out transfer of KE from floor to floor instead of your three floors at a time BS. And I notice that you refuse to provide an Elastic Analysis of structural failure.) The result would be that the collapse would run out of energy before it could continue for more than a few floors. You can take the building in Madrid as a good case in point. (As long as you leave out transfer of KE from floor to floor. )


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People say there’s a cover-up going on – I say, hell yes there is ! But it ain’t what you think, it’s the damn insurance corporations and paid-off structural engineers keeping tight lips. That's why there was a structural information black-out.Anyone who questions the structural integrity of those buildings will be under fire by the corp giants. The authors of the show NOVA have been criticized by industry professionals when they addressed the buildings design that contributed to the collapse.

In fact the insurance companies did pay Silverstein for the buildings and there was no design flaw shown to exist. (Of course not, as long as you don't land a jetliner in them.) The reason for the secrecy of the drawings is because if we had the real core design, it could be analyzed for it's susceptibility to the conjectured collapse and it would be easy to show that the collapse mechanism claimed by the govt is a complete fabrication. (Or that the open air design of the towers had to incorporate floor trusses without vertical center supports. Kinda makes a liability issue. Hint, hint ...)



Yeah right, sell it at the CT web sites. You model is missing critical data.

Your refuse to calculated the per floor area load limits …… I know why.

It would not stand up to your previous calculations of energy transferred by the first 20 floors.



Notice in the truss failure sequence below -

As debris of collapsing floors above exceed the load limits of the floor trusses their overall length becomes SHORTER, this a places a horizontal pulling force to the fastener threads/pins heads and nuts (fasteners are mounted horizontally into the vertical columns. The shear load limits of fasteners are many times its threads/head tensile strength but the greatest force applied was to the center axis of the bolts/pins, effectively pulling them apart lengthwise. The fasteners failed. The floor collapses. That debris is ADDED to the accelerating MASS of falling debris to the next floor. These towers collapsed from within and dragged the vertical column supports as they fell. The welded webbing notwithstanding, it is for positioning and fastener support but does not take place of fastener loads.

The vertical support columns DID NOT have to fail.

From the beginning of this discussion I have maintained that the collapse function begins with fastener failure.

This demonstation shows both Elastic Dynamic loads and Inelastic Static loads. The Elastic properties of the trusses opposing the Inelastic properties of the vertical support columns. It's a bad mixture.


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[Dude]

I guess I cannot believe that Floor 90 collapsed first and then fell on 89 and so on...

I think the partial destruction of 20 floors of support does do something to the integrity of the structure, right?

http://www.walleye.biz/images/12.jpg

[Halophyte]

Vertical column supports - what happened to them ?

As the collapse progressed downward, the mass of debris grew larger in all direction but due to each floor it impacted and the overall square tubular design of the towers and the gravitational forces pulling it down - it pushed outward to perimeter supports and inward to inner column supports drastically deflecting the vertical risers. The vertical support column's weakest dimension is across its axis. Watch the video as the towers fell, you'll see the outer columns being pushed out, deflecting as much as 30 degrees before fastener failure. That's right, the column's fasteners also failed after the trusses failed. As the mass of debris took in more steel and concrete it twisted and mutilated the beams in the debris ball as was evident at ground zero.

.

[Halophyte]

I guess I cannot believe that Floor 90 collapsed first and then fell on 89 and so on...

I think the partial destruction of 20 floors of support does do something to the integrity of the structure, right?

http://www.walleye.biz/images/12.jpg

They were 110 floor towers.


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[gpond]

Watch the video as the towers fell, you'll see the outer columns being pushed out, deflecting as much as 30 degrees before fastener failure.

I'd like to see a picture of that. Anybody got one?

[Dude]

Didn't my jpg come through?

[Large Sarge]

Vertical column supports - what happened to them ?

As the collapse progressed downward, the mass of debris grew larger in all direction but due to each floor it impacted and the overall square tubular design of the towers and the gravitational forces pulling it down - it pushed outward to perimeter supports and inward to inner column supports drastically deflecting the vertical risers. The vertical support column's weakest dimension is across its axis. Watch the video as the towers fell, you'll see the outer columns being pushed out, deflecting as much as 30 degrees before fastener failure. That's right, the column's fasteners also failed after the trusses failed. As the mass of debris took in more steel and concrete it twisted and mutilated the beams in the debris ball as was evident at ground zero.

.

and all this happened at "Free fall speed"

Amazing halo, I really think you need to contact Dr. Jones, since you seem to have found quite a few new laws of physics in your theory....

Perhaps we should just skip all the niceties and just submit your name for the nobel peace prize ....

I am just amazed that 90 floors of undamaged building (both buildings mind you), decide to simultaneusly give way at free fall speeds...(10,000 fasteners break loose at once)

So now its not the office furniture people we are suing, its the steel fastener manufacturers.....

There has to be at least one new law of physics in there, perhaps more...

Someone needs to contact Dr. Jones, and the folks with the Nobel Peace Prize...


who would have thought GIM had a nobel contender writing posts....

Wonders never cease....

[gpond]

Dude,

I see your picture just fine. BTW, looks to me like that top section should have sort of mini-bounced off the rest of the building and tumbled to the ground, but that's another story altogether.

I would like to see a picture of the outer columns being pushed out as much as 30 degrees before the fastener failure.

I would find such a picture fascinating.

[Halophyte]

So you are saying that the collapse started with the top floor falling on the one below, falling on the one below that, and so on. Is this what you are first assuming?

My apologies if I sounded derogatory earlier. If you have an MS in engineering from a quality school, I will have to recheck my own thought process.

Looks like more than one floor to me ... and a hell of a lot more than 1% mass.


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[Halophyte]

The missing link ... unsupported floor truss area was enormous, NO VERTICAL SUPPORT columns between the area outside the center support columns and inside the outer columns. Only end to end truss fasteners and welded webbing (gussets on the vertical plane for load support). Few natural fire stops integral to a more common box girder design. They wanted an open floor plan. They got it - so did the impact and fires

The jetliners went thru the outer support columns like a hot knife thru butter - guess what support columns took the brunt of the impact ? I wondeer what happened to the fireproofing on the trusses ? I wonder what happened to the concrete in the center support columns ?

But the impact did not knock down the towers .... can you say, "severely damaged" structure ?

.

[Large Sarge]

Oh Wait, I just realized something...

We are still suing the Office furniture Manufacturers for WTC 7 Collapse (office fire, no planes), and now we are suing the steel fastener manufacturers for the twin towers collapse....

Are we suing anyone over the pentagon attack?

Do we have enough Lawyers on staff for all these faulty suppliers?

Has anyone contacted Dr. Jones or the folks from the Nobel Peace Prize yet?

We have some "BREAKING NEWS HERE"

[bigjon]

Ah, yes, please do, please look at the video.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
All this talk about momentum, implies something moving and halo’s vision has the whole top free falling 10?, 20? X? feet because his terrible very, very hot fire caused a catastrophic failure of all column at once, because of the fasteners. Now we are asked to believe this (impossible) free falling upper structure caused the simultaneous failure of all of the succeeding structure. (rotflmao)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
The video has this mysterious dust welling up at the base of the tower ( I guess the dust got scared that the top may start moving and decided to get out before it happened) <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
Or the dust is coming from an unseen unknown source of energy like a bomb and is accompanied by a LOUD noise.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
All of this happens without any sign of motion at the top or at the location of the fires.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Just watch the video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...911+eyewitness (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3498980438587461603&q=911+eyewitness)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>

[Halophyte]

All of this happens without any sign of motion at the top or at the location of the fires.

Of course not ..... duh.


Framing failure leaning towards one direction, second pic is engineering dynamics of that towers fall. One side of vertical support columns fail, opposite side bends toward leaning then buckels those columns. Entire top of stucture rocks back as it collapses.


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[Halophyte]

Best shot I couldn't get of outer support column failure ... sorry, the progression of collapsing interior framing kicks up too much dust to capture outer columns bending. Besides, I'm sure the camera guys were running their asses off by them ...

The results are the same.

Below - Elastic dynamics of collapse.


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[gpond]

sorry, the progression of collapsing interior framing kicks up too much dust to capture outer columns bending.
That's what I thought.

[Large Sarge]

Just a few more questions for Halo,

Have you figured out who we are suing for the Pentagon attacks? The Lawyers said we could work out deal for their fee, kind of a "Sue 2 companies and get 1 free" deal (that should make you happy)

Also, The folks from the Nobel Prize finally returned my calls, They are very interested in your new physics discovery..... They seemed to think that what you discovered could "revolutionize the world" Actually they stated "that defies all known laws of gravity and physics"

They also wondered if you had any training in alternative energy, I said yes "He is a whizbang at heat pumps and solar panels...."

They wondered if you could submit some of your ideas on those topics as well,

They said maybe later they could get you to look into "World hunger"

perhaps a position with the "World bank" or the "IMF"

Doors are really opening for you, I am so pleased to see it ....

[Halophyte]

That's what I thought.

While the collapse progresses let's see if you can distiguish any of the outside support columns in the line of progression from the debris cloud below them.

Where do you think the debris came from ?

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[gpond]

While the collapse progresses let's see if you can distiguish any of the outside support columns in the line of progression from the debris cloud below them.

Where do you think the debris came from ?

.I'm more interested in your statement that you could clearly see the outer supports bending 30 degrees BEFORE the fastner failure. Seemed to me there was too much dust to see what you said you saw.

Nice cartoons, though.

Thanks.

[Halophyte]

While you guys keep digging for little scraps of doubt - keep snoozing .... it makes dreams come true ....

.

[Halophyte]

Just watch the video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...911+eyewitness (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3498980438587461603&q=911+eyewitness)<o:p></o:p>[/FONT][/COLOR][/I]
<o:p> </o:p>


For your terminal case of information overload, that's all I would watch.


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[bigjon]

How much do they pay shills, nowadays halo?

Defending a lie, is another mission impossible and you are no Peter Graves.