Why did NIST only test 1% of the Twin Tower beams for temperature effects?

[Apollo20]

RealCDdeal:

The presence of what particular explosive residue would you want to be tested for at Ground Zero?

Nitrates?

Ammonium ion?

The rubble pile was an incredible chemical soup.....

 

[Totovader]

I think a reasonable sample would have been something like 30% of the steel in the fire affected areas to be able to draw any conclusions. In their report, NIST basically said 1% was not enough themselves.

So, 2% more of the total steel- arriving at the SAME CONCLUSION- and you would be convinced that there was no controlled demolition?

Am I understanding your argument correctly?

I have to ask- why? A "reasonable sample" is a bit ambiguous- I mean- technically speaking, the other members of steel did not exhibit any particular qualities that would have suggested that the samples tested were unusual, so a sample of 1% seems quite adequate to me. That... and the reason for the 1% is satisfactory... don't you agree?

 

[stateofgrace]

I don't understand the reason behind this thread and maybe somebody can explain.

Is the premise here that there was an effort to cover up wrong doing by purposefully not analysing the steel at GZ or is there a suggestion that investigators did not do their job correctly by not examining every single bit of steel at GZ?

Maybe the OP can answer

 

[Gravy]

I would very much like to ask questions of the volunteer ASCE members like Gene Corley. You were right that that is where I should go for answers.

I ask you yet again: will you start that process now? Yes or no?

I can't figure out why you're still opining on this subject. You made your opinion clear in your first post.

I don't agree that a government investigation can't shut down conspiracy theories. They have to be fully honest and open to do it though.

Do you have any evidence – anything at all – of dishonesty by the 9/11 investigators that could have affected the outcomes of the many investigations?

When the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up there was an open honest investigation and some people got real egg on their faces for mistakes made, granted they were also made under pressure to make the launch. Nobody has a conspiracy theory about that or at least it isn't a large group of people who have doubts about the thoroughness and honesty of that investigation. Same goes for when the Columbia blew up. Many of us believed it was the foam that damaged the tiles and it was testing that proved it was true. No conspiracy theories exist about that one either.

You're wrong about there not being conspiracy theories about the shuttle disasters.

Challenger disaster conspiracy!

Columbia disaster conspiracy!

The Jews blew up the Shuttle!

Those are a few examples. There are many others. So, realcd, should the U.S. government have been required to investigate these claims?

The present fire weakening theory has yet to be shown as possible with physical models. I seriously don't believe it can be done.

Oy! Spoken like a true non-engineer. Why do you harbor these serious doubts, and what physical models do you propose be constructed to examine your hypothesis? Remember, you'll need to model numerous scenarios involving many different variables.

So how would you build and test these models?

 

[StoneWT]

His real name starts with a 'P'?

I don't understand the reason behind this thread and maybe somebody can explain.

Is the premise there that there was an effort to cover up wrong doing by purposefully not analysing the steel at GZ or is there a suggestion that investigators did not do their job correctly by not examining every single bit of steel at GZ?

Maybe the OP can answer

Sock puppet alert!!!

He is trying to appear neutral with his nagging question. He is trying to trick people into making inaccurate statements so he has something to attack.

As you've seen, he hinted at his position and 'cracked' after hard questioning.

 

[ktesibios]

I would very much like to ask questions of the volunteer ASCE members like Gene Corley. You were right that that is where I should go for answers.

I don't agree that a government investigation can't shut down conspiracy theories. They have to be fully honest and open to do it though. When the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up there was an open honest investigation and some people got real egg on their faces for mistakes made, granted they were also made under pressure to make the launch. Nobody has a conspiracy theory about that or at least it isn't a large group of people who have doubts about the thoroughness and honesty of that investigation. Same goes for when the Columbia blew up. Many of us believed it was the foam that damaged the tiles and it was testing that proved it was true. No conspiracy theories exist about that one either. The present fire weakening theory has yet to be shown as possible with physical models. I seriously don't believe it can be done.

The bolded statement is extremely incorrect. Here's a small sampling of Columbia CTs, garnered by simply Googling the keywords "Columbia" and "scalar":

http://www.eionews.addr.com/scalar_update.htm
http://www.eionews.addr.com/future/scalar_columbia_y.htm
http://www.tldm.org/news6/columbia.htm
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Shuttle.htm

It's like the old saw that no product can be made truly idiot-proof because idiots are so ingenious. No investigation can truly eliminate paranoid conspiracy theories because kooks and cranks are so creative about making @#$% up.

As for the demand for a physical model, there's been plenty of discussion here about why scale models aren't useful in recreating structural failures. A physical model for the WTC fires would most likely require a full-size reconstruction of, at least, the portion of each tower from a few floors below the impact areas to the tops; you would then have to remove sections of columns, break connections and windows and remove SFRM as predicted by the impact models, and then fill the impact floors with appropriately trashed cube farms, spread jet fuel around as predicted by the impact models, light the whole megillah on fire and see what happens. And, if it turns out that you've gotten something wrong, you'll have to build it all over again to check the effect of changing just one of the initial conditions.

That's an insane approach to take to investigating a disaster of the scale of the WTC tower collapses, especially if the purpose of the investigation is to produce data which will be helpful in designing safer buildings and not to disprove any crackpot claim put forward by some random paranoid.

There's a common theme to CTer claims which is nicely demonstrated in realcddeal's posts: a demand for an impossibly high standard of proof for any part of the "official story", coupled with an extremely lax standard for conspiracist fantasies.

 

[beachnut]

The present fire weakening theory has yet to be shown as possible with physical models. I seriously don't believe it can be done.

What about real model, real physical models that show steel fallen, structure totally destroyed except for the concrete core. Wow, there is not a theory about steel and fire. Fire destroys the strength of steel. Fact.

Visual proof of real even, steel failed after a few hours, no aircraft impact, no 10,000 gallons of fuel to start fires.

A real model, real fire, real steel failed. What are you talking about?

 

[rwguinn]

What's a twoofer there goofer? I love the intelligent discussion that seems to come from you. What questions didn't I answer that I should have off the top of my head?

Pick a question and answer it. There have been many, including the one R.Mackey asked--
"The primary reason for the steel search was not to verify high temperatures, though it is partially related. Do you know what it was? "

No one except Apollo20 has been as evasive about answering questions as you...
Except P'doh in his various incarnations

 

[Tony Szamboti]

So, 2% more of the total steel- arriving at the SAME CONCLUSION- and you would be convinced that there was no controlled demolition?

Am I understanding your argument correctly?

I have to ask- why? A "reasonable sample" is a bit ambiguous- I mean- technically speaking, the other members of steel did not exhibit any particular qualities that would have suggested that the samples tested were unusual, so a sample of 1% seems quite adequate to me. That... and the reason for the 1% is satisfactory... don't you agree?

I said 30% not 3%.

 

[capracus]

I think the NIST comment that they only tested 1% of the steel and therefore could not depend on that for conclusions says it all. I cannot help but be highly suspicious of political forces here if they actually sorted through a lot of the steel and then only tested 1% of it. What is going on?

I think statements like this have led some people to doubt that the steel collection was adequate:

The investigation has been hampered by a number of issues, including:

No clear authority and the absence of an effective protocol for how the building performance investigators should conduct and coordinate their investigation with the concurrent search and rescue efforts, as well as any criminal investigation: Early confusion over who was in charge of the site and the lack of authority of investigators to impound pieces of steel for examination before they were recycled led to the loss of important pieces of evidence that were destroyed early during the search and rescue effort. In addition, a delay in the deployment of FEMA's BPAT team may have compounded the lack of access to valuable data and artifacts.

http://gop.science.house.gov/hearings/full02/may01/append1.htm

 

[Tony Szamboti]

What about real model, real physical models that show steel fallen, structure totally destroyed except for the concrete core. Wow, there is not a theory about steel and fire. Fire destroys the strength of steel. Fact.

Visual proof of real even, steel failed after a few hours, no aircraft impact, no 10,000 gallons of fuel to start fires.
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/12447454a26a3309fa.jpg[/qimg]
A real model, real fire, real steel failed. What are you talking about?

Nobody said fire could not produce a collapse of steel, but it depends on many things such as the loads on the steel and the design factor of safety, the duration and intensity of the fire, the heat capacity due to size, and the area of the steel and interconnectivity for heat transfer.

The reality is that we don't have a good explanation for the towers given the low beam temperature evidence.

 

[beachnut]

Nobody said fire could not produce a collapse of steel, but it depends on many things such as the loads on the steel and the design factor of safety, the duration and intensity of the fire, the heat capacity due to size, and the area of the steel and interconnectivity for heat transfer.

The reality is that we don't have a good explanation for the towers given the low beam temperature evidence.

You are an engineer? Go get the papers, have your business buy them and read. I think there are many papers on how and why the steel failed. I do not think you are a real engineer. Only, something like 0.00067 percent of engineers are in the truth movement, are you adding your name to the 9/11 truth movement?

Please give me how the CD took place since millions of engineers already understand the WTC fell from impact and fire damage. I know of no explosives that cause buildings to bow in and collapse without a bunch of "booms" that are the sounds of explosions.

BTW, many of the so called "sounds of explosions", were people hitting the ground. So before you make up ideas based on false evidence please take months to study all the evidence before you make up stuff about sounds.

What school did you go to that lets an engineer loose who is unable to put together the fact about the WTC? When did you graduate, what has happen to our schools?

Fire destroys the strength of steel. Which part of that have you failed to understand. Did you see the fires on 9/11? They were not small fires, they were the biggest office fires I have ever seen and they were set by 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, not trivial. I think you need to understand even at lower temperature the steel is compromised. You have not studied the studies or we would be seeing a whole bunch of numbers and calculation to refute those papers which support steel being weakened and failing. An engineer would have numbers, loads of them if they were serious about this. But then you are trying to prove explosives were used, and they were not. So you are tilting at windmills, a find madness.

The reality is that we don't have a good explanation for the towers given the low beam temperature evidence.

I knew on 9/11 that the fires had weakened the steel and the building failed. Never saw any evidence of CD. I am an engineer, but even a kid coud figure this out.

 

[Gravy]

I think statements like this have led some people to doubt that the steel collection was adequate:

No one denies that there was confusion and lack of direction early in the investigation. As I noted above, it was a while before anyone thought of asking that steel be kept for study. The same man you quoted, Gene Corley, who was in charge of the FEMA team, said this:

"There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures".


 

[Gravy]

Nobody said fire could not produce a collapse of steel, but it depends on many things such as the loads on the steel and the design factor of safety, the duration and intensity of the fire, the heat capacity due to size, and the area of the steel and interconnectivity for heat transfer.

The reality is that we don't have a good explanation for the towers given the low beam temperature evidence.

Two things seem apparent to me:

1) You lied about being a mechanical engineer; and
2) You lied about reading the NIST report.

Very poor show. Very poor.

 

[R.Mackey]

I said 30% not 3%.

I might also point out that, while precise estimates for the WTC Towers weight vary, 30% of the structural steel is on the order of 60,000 tons, or a volume of steel considerably larger than the Big Mo.

You should have a good reason to conduct such an expensive effort... I still haven't seen it. Do you?

 

[Totovader]

I said 30% not 3%.

... which is 3% of the total.

Now, can you answer the question?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

You are, of course, aware that over 90% of the steel had nothing to do with the impact or fires, correct?

Where did you see the bit bolded above? I've read NIST cover to cover and don't remember seeing that. Reference, please.

Please reread NISTNCSTAR1-3 chapter 6.6.2

They only tested two core columns from the fire affected areas and neither had experienced temperatures above 250 degrees C.

What should an an engineer infer from this data?

 

[Furcifer]

Please reread NISTNCSTAR1-3 chapter 6.6.2
They only tested two core columns from the fire affected areas and neither had experienced temperatures above 250 degrees C.
What should an an engineer infer from this data?

I believe Test Case B predicted much higher temperatures on several core columns.

NCSTAR1-6D iii and pg. 310 is a good read

 

[beachnut]

Please reread NISTNCSTAR1-3 chapter 6.6.2

They only tested two core columns from the fire affected areas and neither had experienced temperatures above 250 degrees C.

What should an an engineer infer from this data?

OMG, the WTC towers are still standing? What is your real story on the demise of the WTC, and how many of these silent charges were used. You know you are supporting a view only a few engineer in the entire world support. I think they are nuts, what do you think? And what is your single integrated story for CD?

You have to tell me what school you went to, to get your MSME. I have to know in case you are right so I know the only school in the whole world that teaches people how to see the truth when 99.9 percent of all engineer have missed the same.

 

[R.Mackey]

Please reread NISTNCSTAR1-3 chapter 6.6.2

They only tested two core columns from the fire affected areas and neither had experienced temperatures above 250 degrees C.

What should an an engineer infer from this data?

I have, thank you. Please read the balance of NIST NCSTAR1-3, where it is revealed that those were the only two core columns recoverable from that area which could be tested in such a fashion. The fact that these two columns didn't reach 250 ^oC in no way implies that other columns couldn't have.

You are, in essence, attempting to cherry-pick the data. There just wasn't much evidence that survived from the impact floors in good enough condition to trace where it came from.