The Great Thermate Debate

[WTC Dust]

Your article spam states that the towers could withstand the impact of an airliner. This point is not in dispute, because they did.

Can any of you show steel shattering when gently heated to far below its melting point?

 

[ergo]

There isn't any corrosion taking place in that video nor is there the "swiss cheese" effect as previously observed in the (fema?) paper.

What he has done is burnt a hole by melting the steel. The effect he has produced has not been observed in any of the steel recovered from ground zero. It's as simple as that.

He produced a hole in structural steel exactly like the kinds of holes found in the swiss cheese steel. It was the closest comparison to the swiss cheese steel that we've yet seen. Bee dunkers certainly haven't produced anything except pictures of rusted-out barbeques.

You want him to exactly replicate that one sample? OK, throw the steel piece into a hot debris pile and let it rust for a few weeks or months. At the same time, throw another piece of steel that has no holes into the same debris pile -- see which one ends up looking more like the FEMA sample. As you yourself mention, the swiss cheese effect was not exactly a common observation.

Your statement about the steel recovered seems to suggest that all the steel recovered from the site was analyzed, when in fact both FEMA and NIST acknowledged that they had little evidence to work with. Tony mentions less than 0.5%. You're trying to draw these broad conclusions from a sample of less than 1%. If we found one piece of swiss cheese steel in 0.5% of all the steel, how much would we find in the other 95.5%?

 

[excaza]

Can any of you show steel shattering when gently heated to far below its melting point?

When did this happen?

 

[ergo]

Verinage demolitions are designed so that the upper block remains level as it falls, thus striking the lower block in a single impact. Both towers fell such that the upper block had rotated before striking the lower block, resulting in an impact spread out over time. This is the reason the towers do not show such a strong deceleration on striking the lower block, although some deceleration is visible.

Yes, because things impacting other things at an angle get to bypass Newton's Third Law. But only on 9/11.

 

[WTC Dust]

When did this happen?

I don't think it ever happened.

 

[excaza]

I don't think it ever happened.

Nobody does, so I don't know why you asked the question.

 

[excaza]

Yes, because things impacting other things at an angle get to bypass Newton's Third Law. But only on 9/11.

Did you just ignore this?

Both towers fell such that the upper block had rotated before striking the lower block, resulting in an impact spread out over time.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

A few snippets isolated from your cut & paste:

I don't know if we considered the fire damage that would cause. ."

"Of course, when Yamaski was designing the buildings he was aware that steel, when it reaches an inherent temperature of 1200 degrees, will stretch at the rate of 9 1/2 inches per 100 feet. He undoubtedly took into account the possibility of a plane's hitting the building and causing the steel to stretch in a resulting fire. There might even be a collapse, but only on the side of the building that was 'hit. Partial collapses often happen in burning buildings."

... The new technologies he had installed after the motion experiments and wind-tunnel work had created a structure more than strong enough to withstand such a blow.

...The second problem was that no one thought to take into account the fires that would inevitably break out when the jetliner's fuel exploded, exactly as the B-25's had."

Guess what? Your own quotes supports what Tri said, which was:

Correct. The buildings survived the plane crash. It was the combination of the plane, the fires, and the damage that caused the crash.

... and are in contradiction to what you said in response to him.

Apparenlty Leslie Robertson, says different. Make some research !!!

Triforcharity is saying exactly what Robertson said: It was a combination of impact damage and fires that caused the Twin Towers to collapse. Your pull quotes show exactly that too, that Robertson said they designed for the impact damage, but badly underestimated the effects a fire could have. As shown by the quotes you yourself posted:

...The second problem was that no one thought to take into account the fires that would inevitably break out when the jetliner's fuel exploded, exactly as the B-25's had."

... But, and with the 767 the fuel load was enormous compared to that of the 707, it was a fully fuelled airplane compared to the 707 which was a landing aircraft. Just absolutely no comparison between the two."

"John Skilling was the head structural engineer for the World Trade Center. In a 1993 interview, Skilling stated that the Towers were designed to withstand the impact and fires resulting from the collision of a large jetliner such as Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8."

"... the Towers were designed to withstand the impact and fires resulting from the collision of a large jetliner...". And "... with the 767 the fuel load was enormous compared to that of the 707, it was a fully fuelled airplane compared to the 707 which was a landing aircraft. Just absolutely no comparison between the two."

Every single one of these quotes you listed support Tri's statement and contradicts yours.

Here's the other quote you yourself cited where Skilling comes out and directly contradicts you:

"The buildings were designed specifically to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707—the largest plane flying in 1966, the year they broke ground on the project—and Robertson says it could have survived even the larger 767s that crashed into the towers on Tuesday morning. But the thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel finally brought down the noble structures. “As the fire raged it got hotter and hotter and the steel got weaker and weaker,” he says, adding that building a skyscraper able to handle such a blaze would not have been viable, financially and functionally. “You could always prepare for more and more extreme events, but there has to be a risk analysis of what’s reasonable.”

Again, what Tri said:

The buildings survived the plane crash. It was the combination of the plane, the fires, and the damage that caused the crash.

What you said in response:

Apparenlty Leslie Robertson, says different. Make some research !!!

Which of those quotes contradicts Tri's statement that the combination of plane damage and fires caused the collapse?

The fact of the matter is, Tri got it right, and you got it wrong. Your own post contains quotes that undoes your argument, not his. You did not do better research than I or anyone else here did; all you did was fail to read the very quotes you yourself posted. Again: Robertson fully agrees that it was the combination of impact damage and fires that led to the towers collapses. Which is exactly what Triforcharity said. And exactly what you claimed Robertson didn't say.

Next time, read your own material before posting it.

 

[Dave Rogers]

@ excaza - please read patiently and you patience will be fruitful

Michal, please answer the following hypothetical question honestly.

A series of calculations performed manually by a single person in 1964, covering three pages of longhand script, indicates that a certain highly complex series of events is not expected to happen. A second series of calculations performed by state-of-the-art numerical simulations in 2005, taking several weeks to run each calculation on a cluster of high-end workstations, disagrees with the 1964 analysis and indicates that the series of events is, in fact, expected to happen. Which result would you consider the more reliable?

While considering this question, consider the situation where the series of events involves the responses of many thousands of separate components, as well as the behaviour of a highly complex moving debris field and a series of fires, whose simulation was completely impossible in 1964.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

Yes, because things impacting other things at an angle get to bypass Newton's Third Law. But only on 9/11.

Wrong Newton's Law. You're thinking of a different stupid argument.

Dave

 

[Alferd_Packer]

how does he think they gained access to all those hundreds of bolt tightening holes?

at the nearest stripping and new fit-out

You've never work construction in a hight rise building before, have you?

Why would they demo the perimeter column enclosures?

 

[WTC Dust]

Nobody does, so I don't know why you asked the question.

fine

 

[Alferd_Packer]

and finally, why bother with thermite when aircraft impact and fire will do the same thing?

no it could not. Plane a size of B767 can not collapse the very building, even if at high speed and fully fueled

Not that old claim again.

Let me direct you attention to what Leslie Robertson said:

One of my jobs was to look at all of the possible events that might take place in a highrise building. And of course there had been in New York two incidences of aircraft impact, the most famous one of course being on the Empire State Building. Now, we were looking at an aircraft not unlike the Mitchell bomber that ran into the Empire State Building. We were looking at aircraft that was lost in the fog, trying to land. It was a low-flying, slow-flying 707, which was the largest aircraft of its time. And so we made calculations, not anywhere near the level of sophistication that we could today. But inside of our ability, we made calculations of what happened when the airplane goes in and it takes out a huge section of the outside wall of the building. And we concluded that it would stand. It would suffer but it would stand. And the outside wall would have a big hole in it, and the building would be in place. What we didn't look at is what happens to all that fuel. And perhaps we could be faulted for that, for not doing so. But for whatever reason we didn't look at that question of what would happen to the fuel.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/filmmore/pt.html

 

[Alferd_Packer]

He made one hole.....to bring down the towers (without plane and fire) would have taken hundreds of devices and yet only one piece of CORRODED steel was found.....how come? There should have been hundreds of these......



Looking similar and being the same are not the same thing thing

The corroded steel was pulled from the WTC 7 wreckage several weeks after the collapse and while some of the fuel oil fires in that wreckage were still burning. Hot corrosion is a well understood phenomena.

 

[Sunstealer]

He produced a hole in structural steel exactly like the kinds of holes found in the swiss cheese steel. It was the closest comparison to the swiss cheese steel that we've yet seen.

No - it's not remotely like that observed.

Look I'm a materials engineer/metallurgist by profession, I've performed dozens of failure investigations in the last 15 years and I know what I'm looking at.

You can clearly see plastic deformation of the steel around the hole. You can also see that there is plenty of spent thermite (which will contain lots of aluminium) adhered to the steel around the hole. There is no thinning of the material in adjacent parts of the steel and no multiple holes.

If thermite had been used in 911 we would see tonnes of waste product from the thermite and large single holes in specific parts of the structure replicated many times. It would look extremely unusual to anyone recovering steel.

A temperature of 2400°C is going to destroy any FeS-FeO eutectic and you certainly aren't going to see a solidified eutectic upon cooling nor the type of intergranular oxidation and sulphidation as per the fema report. High temperature corrosion has occurred in the rubble pile after the collapses.

 

[ergo]

If thermite had been used in 911 we would see tonnes of waste product from the thermite and large single holes in specific parts of the structure replicated many times. It would look extremely unusual to anyone recovering steel.

And 0.5% of the steel was studied. No analysis has yet been done on how many columns and at what intervals would need to be severed in this fashion. Your claim of "tonnes" of waste product seems to be a guess based on an unspecified model. We also have not yet seen the effects of nanothermite or what byproducts would be produced by this substance.

 

[excaza]

And 0.5% of the steel was studied. No analysis has yet been done on how many columns and at what intervals would need to be severed in this fashion.

Why not? You've had 9 years.

We also have not yet seen the effects of nanothermite or what byproducts would be produced by this substance.

How would the products of that chemical reaction be any different than thermite?

 

[ergo]

Wrong Newton's Law. You're thinking of a different stupid argument.

Right, because Newton's Third Law doesn't describe impacts.

 

[TjW]

The "swiss cheese" eroded steel was studied by the Worcester group, and found to have been due to a sulfidation attack, not thermite. Their experimentation showed reaction kinetics on the order of hours to days; that right there eliminates thermate from consideration.

The supposed "thermatic" material from Jones's crew was anything but. This was demonstrated using Jones's and Harrit's own data, and shown to be material that was hardly "thermitic" at all.

This gets pointed out time and time again. You truthers cannot keep beating the drum of disproven proposals.

I'll bet you a dollar they will.

 

[excaza]

Right, because Newton's Third Law doesn't describe impacts.

For someone who doesn't understand physics, you're awfully snarky about it.

This question was asked of you before: According to your physics, what happens when you drop an anvil on a sandcastle?