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NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months."
No one ever expected a fire to burn out of control for several hours. There was always an anticipation that fire units would be dispatched and undertake steps to control the fire.
Civilian structures are designed based on the expectation that emergency services will be available. They are not constructed as bunkers, for the most part, as the expenses are simply too high to do that. Nevertheless, NIST made a recommendation to evaluate those buildings that use similar construction methods and suggests several possible cost-effective ways of mitigating the risk of collapse under similar circumstances.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'll deny it, and I'm not "a crazy."
It is compeltely obvious to so many people on so many levels that the building was imploded, and until there is an explanation that can address all of the ignored or glossed over issues, people who have truly looked at this without an agenda and who have a problem with these official theories aren't going to feel differently.
I am not saying I know exactly what happened, and I am not chiding anyone who wants to believe this report...If that settles it for you, then great. I don't think it settles it for anybody who has questions who has looked at the situation with a critical eye, and who can think for themselves.
Anybody who knows anything about engineering and controlled demolition can watch the video of that builidng coming down and know that it didn't collapse from a fire; not like that, no way - and that is ignoring all of the testimony from firemen and other who were there who claim it was imploded.
I would believe that the world mass hallucinated before I would give creedence to some of the bullshit "official explanations" about a lot of the 9/11 events.
I'm guessing that they made a mistake in the confusion of not having very many facts in the wake of something huge happening. Unless you're suggesting that the entire BBC is in on a conspiracy?
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
How you ever seen a botched controlled demolition of a building? One where, say, only part of the charges actually detonated? (Kind of like, say, a tower that was struck on one side?)
Because then the building doesn't follow down all at once. Only one side of it does, and the other side that had been supported by that side starts to lean towards the now-missing supports that had held it up.
That would be how. There are plenty of videos out there of controlled demolitions that didn't quite go to plan. And none of them look like 9/11.
Now I suppose it's possible that the planes could have rolled a "natural 20" and managed to damage the tower just-so to mimic a correct demolition. But lightning doesn't strike twice.
"It looks like they want to wrap-up this investigation and blame [the collapse] on normal office fires," said Gage during counter-conference.
Normal office fires? What the fuck is that guy smoking? This was not "normal office fires"
Oh, I get it, he's got an /agenda/. It's a crackpot agenda though.
Crackpots are the most annoying of all, because not only are they wrong, but their untested gedankenexperiments are so wrong you don't know where to start pointing out the wrongness.
"No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."
But then this is some reason for Gage to think that the sulfur was part of the mystical "thermite" which contains no sulfur in its composition.
And he calls himself an engineer.
I'll tell ya what the source was. The sulfur was in the steel when it was manufactured. Please go look up AISI steel grades.
http://www.answers.com/topic/aisi-steel-grades
OMG! STEEL HAS SULFUR IN IT! AND PHOSPHOROUS! AND MANGANESE! AND MOLYBDENUM! AND COBALT!
Fucking retards
Making steel is like making brownies. There are recipes for all the grades and they have different elements.
"400 architectural and engineering professionals"
Just because it says PE next to your name it doesn't mean you're smart. It means you passed a test. I know of one engineer that totally bought into the bullshit over on Stormfront.org. Seriously.
Richard Gage is to architects and engineers as Jack Thompson is to attorneys.
Someone should seriously look into taking away his stamp.
--
BMO
Another big reason large buildings tend to fall straight down is that is the direction gravity is pulling them. Anything much bigger than three or four stories is going to come apart very soon after leaving vertical, and the pieces come straight down.
That is simply not true.
You people and your crackpot theories, pfff.
You can't take the sky from me...
Quite a few actually, they look like this
Making a building not fall sideways is a complicated task that requires a lot of training and preparation. The thought that you can get three out of three perfect collapses by splashing them with a bit of aviation fuel must have demolition companies shaking in their boots
Arguing with truthers is like arguing with creationists. They've already decided, it's a matter of faith. The weird thing is having looked at the structural collapse of the towers, if the official version was controlled demolition and the conspiracy theory was burning jet fuel, from a straight scientific standpoint I'd be inclined to believe the conspiracy. Physically, building catches fire, steel expands, breaks seals makes a lot more sense then Rutger Hauer and why not Whoopy spend a few days planting charges. However, like IDers, truthers decided they can make up various physical laws and ignore others as they go along all the while shouting "science!" (cue: T Dolby). And they get continuously pumped up by right wing trolls who figure quite accurately that they make the left look like a bunch of hairy clowns shouting 'JET FUEL BURNS AT 800 DEGREES MAN' at a fireman's funeral.
The real cover up is that the buildings weren't code to begin with, or rather David Rockefeller etc bent building codes to get them built. And Rudy had all the fuel stored in 7 against the advice of all the professionals. And that the Saucer People, in league with the Bush Administration, used a gravity ray to make the buildings fall faster then gravity and straight down.
Actually if you work some UFOs in I'll sign up. How cool would that be?
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
the explanation that I read was that he meant to "pull" the firefighters out of the building, not ignite some explosives. I also read that pulling is not a valid demolition term, at least not anymore.
Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch, because he always puts Jiffy in my lunch.
A NY radio station was told beforehand that the building was going to be demolished. The BBC reported the fall of the building 20 minutes before it actually fell.
Sorry, but the actual evidence is very, very compelling. YOU are the one who is rationalizing here.
I would like to direct your attention towards Benford's law. The one about the frequency of the first digit in natural data. Not to be confused with Benford's law of controversy, although equally applicable to the situation.
Cynical Idealist
Do they mean to say that a fire can cause a [fireproofed steel-core] building to collapse?
It sure surprised the editor in chief of Fire Engineering magazine, but what does HE know, huh?
he warns that unless there is a full-blown investigation by an independent panel established solely for that purpose, "the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals."
You can't take the sky from me...
Obviously you've never done forensics at a fire scene. I have; my father was on the governor's arson squad (State of California Division of Forestry) while I was a teenager, and they used me as a photographer since my grandfather had given me an excellent camera. You would be amazed at what odds and ends survive the most awful fires.
Insecure people need conspiracy theories, they need to make what happened more complicated and devious that it really was. Because if what happened really was this easy;
Prior to 9/11 several people from a third world countries entered the US legally and took flight lessons and then booked flights. Then on 9/11 they legally boarded the aircraft and once the aircraft were airborne took over aircraft, that basically fly themselves, and then pointed them at buildings.
They could never sleep at night and it would make people from the third world smarter that they are.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Yeah, we've been so lucky to find Mohammed Atta's passport in pristine condition several blocks from Ground Zero one day after [...]
Also, this is just wrong. His passport was found on the street below; after the impact, but before the collapses.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
It's a common misconception that random events don't or can't look very neat and tidy. [...] The way that a skyscraper is designed and built favors it falling more or less straight down [...]
It could also be that anyone who has ever watched a Discovery Channel documentary on professional demolition of large buildings has been led to believe that safely and completely collapsing such a building requires weeks of planning and absolutely precise placement and detonation of lots of explosives.
Or you could just thow some kerosene on it.
Dark smoke like the towers had is indication of lack of oxygen and therefore poor burning. It wasn't burning that well or as hot as possible and the kind of smoke proves the point.
WTC 7 could have had ideal burning conditions which would have minimized the amount of smoke.
I know experts in relevant fields too afraid to go on record with any commentary; the event had unique conditions never seen before and legitimately raises a great deal of questions and problems on that grounds alone-- but the political atmosphere IS limiting open critical analysis by experts (in addition to government not releasing useful information. This report isn't that useful if you are able to do the work yourself; especially if you don't want to get involved in the mess that even a picky correction would bring you.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I can't tell which building you're referring to, because neither the Windsor building nor WTC7 were "methiodically [sic] stripped of all insulation before the fire".
At the fire, the building had almost no spandrels at upper floors. The steel columns had almost no fire resistance covers at upper floors.
Too busy pointing out typos to check for truthiness?
You can't take the sky from me...
The most difficult issue to deal with is what yourself said. Steel frame skyscrapers are hard to bring down. It is especially difficult to bring them down into their own footprint such that there are no residual steel columns left standing. With due respect to the authors of this official report and their three years of computer simulations, I do not believe for one moment that thermal expansion from the burning of paper, desks and plastic fittings (even over a period of many hours) is sufficient to explain this. I also do not think it can explain molten steel in the wreckage weeks after the event.
It is true that significant preparation for a controlled demolition would have been required. From what I have read, it is not true that tons of TNT would have been required, or that the columns would have needed drilling if thermite charges were used. I am not saying that this is definitely what happened. I am saying it fits the observed collapse and debris better than thermal expansion.
Forgive me if I ignore your strawmen.
Now, please, if you have really read everything available and have a good explanation, please lay it out for us.
Let's do a simple thought experiment here.
What happens when you hit an airliner seat repeatedly with a sledgehammer? How about an airplane wing?
OK, now, try hitting the passport repeatedly with the same sledgehammer.
Jet fuel burns at around 1400 degrees. While this is not hot enough to melt steel, it is hot enough to make it loose its structural integrity. It only takes 1100 degrees to cause the steel to lose about half of its structural strength from what I have read.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
If a structure doesn't have to be cost-effective or inhabitable, you can build almost anything with concrete. The most prominent example of this phenomenon is the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang.
Not inhabitable, certainly not cost-effective, but it is over a thousand feet of concrete structure and interesting in a creepy way.
Cue the "In Communist North Korea, concrete builds you!" jokes.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I know I should be a good little boy and accept the official report issued by the government. Well, sorry, but experience has taught me that governments do not always tell the truth.
The fact is that WTC 1, WTC 2 and WTC 7 were all extremely strongly built structures. The first two were specifically designed to withstand impacts by the largest jet aircraft without collapsing. WTC 7 was not hit by any aircraft. With the exception of the three claimed examples of September 11, 2001, no steel frame structure has ever collapsed as a result of fire.
I am well aware of the implausibility of the "controlled demolition" scenario. I am not saying that that is what happened. I am saying that there are enough demonstrated lies and is enough attempted misinformation around the events of 9/11 to raise strong suspicions that there is more to the events than three buildings failing to meet their design criteria.
You do realize that the support structure in the towers was entirely on the perimeter, right? Each floor was hung like a (rigid) hammock from the outer walls. When the crossbeams softened just enough (no linger rigid) to pull inward rather than down, the outer walls buckled at that point. How else would you immagine a hammock would fall if you cut its strings?
Once the mass of building above the weak point got moving, nothing below was strong enough to hold it up, so it was nearly freefall at that point. But look carefully at the video and you'll clearly see that the building above where the plane hit falls as an intact mass, taking out each floor below it in turn.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Imagine you're in NYC before 9/11, and someone takes you to the WTC complex and says "Point out WTC 7." Unless you were intimately familiar with the complex, could you do it? Which building is WTC 3? WTC 5? Is the South Tower WTC 1, and the North WTC 2, or vice versa? Now imagine you're a reporter for the BBC who may have spent a total of a few weeks in the United States. WTC 3 was destroyed in the collapse of WTC 1 and 2, and WTC 5 suffered a partial collapse. Are you absolutely positive that in that position while reporting either the partial collapse of WTC 5 or the total collapse of WTC 3 you might not refer to one as WTC 7?
Why did you lie about not being a conspiracy theorist?
Anyway, any structural engineer can tell you that you're full of shit. There's more than enough kinetic energy in a building like WTC7 to guarantee a complete collapse once the mass starts moving. The reason demolition teams normally get involved is simply because if you want a CONTROLLED demolition, you need to be careful about how you bring the building down. On the other hand, if you don't care about damaging half of Manhattan, you can just send in a midget with a sledgehammer.
History is a pretty good example to use. Considering that WTC 1,2,7 are the first skyscrapers ever to collapse from a fire. Also pretty interesting considering WTC 7 didn't even get hit by anything... just somethings to think about.
now they even got Poland and the Czech Republic to agree to the missile shield, even though it doesn't even work and in both countries the majority of the population are opposed to the project.
Funny thing happened a couple weeks ago. There was this big country that invaded this little country on its border, and suddenly opinion polls in Poland flipped right around.
Welcome to the wonderful world of self-confirming delusions, wherein you need never admit you're wrong.
Yes, in delusional worlds, or "delusional science", or even more precisely, "delusional simulation", as I like to call it, you start with a some assumptions about your system that are difficult to prove false and a limited set of constraints (aka observations) and then, you run simulations, either with a computer or in your head, tweaking a potentially infinite array of parameters that far exceed the observations, until the result of the simulation is similar to the model you had in mind when you began. This is a good methodology to prove any point you want, including any theory for 9-11. I've seen more than a few prestigious papers that have taken this approach.
Just callin' it like I see it.
When talking about the so-called controlled demolition theory of 7 World Trade, it was only the conspiracy theorists who called it "W-T-C-7" when talking about it.
These buildings were known by a different name in colloquial speech:
The building in question was known as "7 World Trade." The others were "1 World Trade" and "2 World Trade" and the like. Never "South Tower" or "W-T-C-Anything."
All this internet-based conspiracism by non-locals has renamed them "WTCx" but they were never known as such to the 400+ men and women who died protecting them on 9/11.
.
Kriston
Clearly, you have never flown a plane either.
I am not a licensed pilot, nor have I received any training to speak of, and yet I have flown a plane before. A roughly 30 second explanation of the stick and pedals was quite sufficient, and by the way I was about 10 years old at the time. Of course, I didn't take off or land the plane, but then neither did the 9/11 hijackers. I'm pretty certain I could have hit a building if I had wanted to, even given that the only buildings in the area were single family homes, much smaller than the WTC towers.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I don't know. You tell me. I'm not claiming that the WTC buildings were demolished because I have no evidence for that. I just want a credible explanation for the collapses
You believe the experts to be wrong. You are claiming that they did not collapse as per the official reports. You must have some reason to have that belief. An explanation was presented, and you state that you think it isn't credible. You give no standards as to credible. You are not listening to others and saying "thanks for the info, I'll consider that." You are saying "Sweetheart (in an obviously condescending tone), experts (unnamed ones that are apparently not the ones that wrote the reports) think that it is improbable that it would fall that way." That's not refuting anything. That's parroting a personal opinion like it's a relevant fact. The simple fact is that no one has ever destroyed a building that large. Extrapolation can be used to guess as to what might happen, but someone that takes an extrapolation over actual data must be insane. No really, not name calling, but a technical diagnosis. They must have a disconnect with reality in order to take what has been shown to happen and state it did not happen because it was called unlikely by some unnamed experts who have never done anything similar in their lives.
I subscribe to the Sherlock Holmes school of thought. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth. I can agree that it is unlikely that the events would have unfolded exactly as they did. However, every other possible explanation has been found to be impossible. That leaves only one explanation. If you have another, let us know. If you don't, then you are supporting my Sherlock Holmes theory that the unlikely has happened.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't know if it was building debre, plane parts, or just a ball of burning fuel, but when you watch the second impact video, you see a large fireball shoot off to the side and arc down. I have always contended that this fireball, whatever it was made of, landed on building 7. It was on fire just after the second tower was hit.
Of course if it was an engine, something would have been left behind to show that. But if it was part of a fuel tank, either aluminum or magnesium or some composite material, it could have burned up with the fire or simply been mistaken for building debre. And yes, both of those metal will burn and aluminum will turn to an ash (from oxidation I think) But that is my guess, and I at one time mapped this out on an impromptu trajectory-building placement cocktail napkin and was satisfied enough for my own self. But I'm pretty sure that it would map out in real life too. The angle of the fireball shooting from the impact side of the building should have placed it at or around building 7.
Scientist: 1) Observation, 2) hypothesis, 3) testing, 4) conclusion.
Truther/creationist: 1) Conclusion, 2) lies, deception, quote mining.
Your quote mining is like reading the standard creationist argument where Darwin says that if we can't explain the evolution of the eye, Evolution is in trouble. They then triumphantly present this text as "proof" that even Darwin knew that his theory was flawed. What they don't do is to quote the next paragraph, where Darwin actually explains how the problem he just posed can be solved.
Similarly, you quoted only some parts to raise doubts about the conclusions in the document. You didn't bother to look at the data presented. You simply quoted the standard way scientists put forth their findings and presented it as if it was a contradiction. Like creationists like to yell about how evolutionary biologists use a lot of words like "seem", "may", "could", etc. Those words, according to creationists "prove" that scientists are actually doubting their own conclusions.
Not at all. What you are describing is witnesses interpretating something to what they think it should mean, or other people interpreting the witness statements without sufficient data to support their assertions. Ponder this for a moment:
If I observe a hazy figure in the night, and conclude that it is a ghost, is my conclusion automatically right because I was there to observe it? Of course not. Just because I saw something doesn't mean that I picked the right explanation from a list of many possible explanations.
Like a creationist, you are now going to try to use the "it's self-evident" argument. "It should be self-evident that all this wonderful life on earth could arise without a creator." The argument is completely bogus, of course. Just because you interpret something in a certain way or think that something is self-evident doesn't mean that the actual evidence supports your position.
Then you are inevitably going to present me with yet another creationist, er, truther argument: "Yeah? But how about this", and then you pick another item from your laundry list of prepared truther arguments that I've heard a million times before, and it still doesn't convince me. Just like a creationist going "oh, but the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex, so Evolution could certainly not have created that!" fails to impress me, every single time.
I'm pretty sure that they are, actually.
Why did they comment on this the day after? Who ordered them removed? It doesn't really matter as far as this discussion is concerned. It's just another item on your creationist, er, I mean truther laundry list of "wow isn't that odd, so my position must be right even though all the actual evidence doesn't support my position!" But it would be interesting to know what you are referring to anyway. They ordered them removed? Why don't "they" order all 9/11 truther pages removed today?
Structures aren't blown up in one shot (just like life didn't just pop into existence from nowhere, which creationist claim to be the case). Controlled demolitions are series of explosives, timed carefully. Which is why it's extremely unlikely that this happened, because it would take a long time to set up this kind of thing, and they have to tear down parts of the building, and so on. I think people working there would notice :D