Tony Szamboti Publishes a Technical Paper about 9/11 Truth

[Scott Sommers]

One of the most cited papers ever published in the International Journal of Protective Structures is The Influence of the Underpressure Phase on the Dynamic Response of Structures Subjected to Blast Loads. It was written by a team that includes Norbert Gebbeken. The whole paper can be obtained for free from here
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/23q4604081724381/fulltext.pdf
It does not address 9/11 but does contain this statement about the World Trade Center collapses (p. 219).

The analysis of constructions subjected to blast loads has become more and more important in the last decade. Today, changing security requirements specify the consideration of blast loads for public and/or private buildings. Especially government buildings like the US embassy in Berlin or landmark buildings like the new World Trade Center Tower 2 in New York or the new European Central Bank Tower in Frankfurt must be designed in a way that they do not fail catastrophically under extreme loading conditions.

I was able to find this video of Professor Gebbeken talking about the WTC collapse. It's in German which I do not understand.
Norbert Gebbeken mit Holzmodell für World Trade Center


The IJPS contains another paper that deals directly with the WTC collapses.
Numerical Simulations on the Collapse Behaviors of High-Rise Towers
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/1256u6q22816p637/
However, in this simulation, the towers collapsed.

 

[ozeco41]

...The IJPS contains another paper that deals directly with the WTC collapses.
Numerical Simulations on the Collapse Behaviors of High-Rise Towers
http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/1256u6q22816p637/
However, in this simulation, the towers collapsed.

Scott there is a real risk of relying on peer reviewed published and professional papers from academics. Far too many of them come across as if they are authoritative explanations of what happened at WTC on 9/11. They are not accurate. The paper you link is not accurate - it is yet another of that genre - based on false or at least unclear understanding of what actually happened at WTC on 9/11. See this bit of an extract:

...From these results, it is evident that the high-speed collapse of the WTC towers might have been caused by an inherent weakness in their member connections in addition to the destruction directly caused by the aircraft impact...

The twin towers collapses had a clear separation of several stages. The preceding quoted bit is ambiguous in the way that many academics are ambiguous AND many truthers/trolls rely on similar ambiguity and unclear definitions.

The high speed of WTC1-2 global collapse was not related to aircraft damage. There was no aircraft damage relevant to the "high speed collapse". Aircraft impact damage was a contributing factor in the cascade failure of the "initiation" stage BUT not in what Major_Tom labels as the ROOSD mechanism of high speed global collapse. Academics who pay no attention to the real collapse mechanisms which we forum members are familiar with add nothing of benefit to our discussions. As with the Bazant claims it takes us more effort to remove the fog created by the academics than it takes to explain what actually happened without "help" from academics who trust their models more than observed reality.

Members may care to read the full abstract - it shows clearly to those of us with the technical expertise how little the authors understand the actual collapse mechanisms for WTC Twin Towers on 9/11. Go for it folks - form your own opinions.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Wouldn't the impact damage affect the initiation stage effect the rest of the collapse?

Apologies if this is a derail, but bonus points if you can tie in your answer to Tony Szamboti's paper.

 

[GlennB]

This brief extract from the abstract has me worried from the start :

"The only complete hypothesis of the global collapse mechanism of the Towers is a successive flattening of stories associated with compressive column failure ..."

 

[JSanderO]

Wouldn't the impact damage affect the initiation stage effect the rest of the collapse?

Apologies if this is a derail, but bonus points if you can tie in your answer to Tony Szamboti's paper.

I believe the global collapse phase was enabled by the weakening of the structure including mechanical destruction by the plane impacts. In actual fact there were no distinct phase boundaries. But one could say a tipping point was reached where the structure in the region of the plane strikes could no longer support the loads. At that instant there was a *phase shift* and global collapse ensued which has been described as ROOSD which was in fact a process of multiple mechanisms... including floor destruction, mass flows downward, loss of bracing in both the facade and core and ensuing loss of stability in facade and core leading to their collapse.

Up until the moment when the aggregate yield strength of the axial load paths dropped below the service load in the region of the plane impacts, the tower stood. But as the fires raged the yield strength was being eroded. The destruction of the aggregate load strength could conceivably be accomplished by devices which would mechanically destroy sections of the the axial load paths or weaken them by heat. There is no evidence of these devices but there is ample evidence that the fires were at work weakening the steel... past the point of being able to support the floor/mass above.

Tony claims there was not enough heat present in addition to the mechanical damage/destruction caused by the plane impact to promote the *fatal* amount of weakening, buckling and translation to kick off ROOSD. How he knows this is a mystery.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

I believe the global collapse phase was enabled by the weakening of the structure including mechanical destruction by the plane impacts. In actual fact there were no distinct phase boundaries. But one could say a tipping point was reached where the structure in the region of the plane strikes could no longer support the loads. At that instant there was a *phase shift* and global collapse ensued which has been described as ROOSD which was in fact a process of multiple mechanisms... including floor destruction, mass flows downward, loss of bracing in both the facade and core and ensuing loss of stability in facade and core leading to their collapse.

Up until the moment when the aggregate yield strength of the axial load paths dropped below the service load in the region of the plane impacts, the tower stood. But as the fires raged the yield strength was being eroded. The destruction of the aggregate load strength could conceivably be accomplished by devices which would mechanically destroy sections of the the axial load paths or weaken them by heat. There is no evidence of these devices but there is ample evidence that the fires were at work weakening the steel... past the point of being able to support the floor/mass above.

Tony claims there was not enough heat present in addition to the mechanical damage/destruction caused by the plane impact to promote the *fatal* amount of weakening, buckling and translation to kick off ROOSD. How he knows this is a mystery.

It is only a mystery to you.

The actual steel temperatures needed to weaken the columns to the point of failure on the initiation floor would be about 650 degrees C minimum and there is no evidence of steel temperatures even remotely close to that.

Additionally, there are other problems for a heat weakened initiation that are explained in the paper.

I have also explained to you a number of times that ROOSD does not save the natural collapse theory because the collapse would not be self-propagating until further down in the process than the first several stories, as it needs to pick up steam. The natural collapse theory cannot explain the first several stories of the collapse.

 

[Scott Sommers]

Scott there is a real risk of relying on peer reviewed published and professional papers from academics. Far too many of them come across as if they are authoritative explanations of what happened at WTC on 9/11. They are not accurate. The paper you link is not accurate - it is yet another of that genre - based on false or at least unclear understanding of what actually happened at WTC on 9/11. See this bit of an extract:

The twin towers collapses had a clear separation of several stages. The preceding quoted bit is ambiguous in the way that many academics are ambiguous AND many truthers/trolls rely on similar ambiguity and unclear definitions.

The high speed of WTC1-2 global collapse was not related to aircraft damage. There was no aircraft damage relevant to the "high speed collapse". Aircraft impact damage was a contributing factor in the cascade failure of the "initiation" stage BUT not in what Major_Tom labels as the ROOSD mechanism of high speed global collapse. Academics who pay no attention to the real collapse mechanisms which we forum members are familiar with add nothing of benefit to our discussions. As with the Bazant claims it takes us more effort to remove the fog created by the academics than it takes to explain what actually happened without "help" from academics who trust their models more than observed reality.

Members may care to read the full abstract - it shows clearly to those of us with the technical expertise how little the authors understand the actual collapse mechanisms for WTC Twin Towers on 9/11. Go for it folks - form your own opinions.

I guess I should stated this more carefully. The point of my posts about the journal - and apologies here to Tony and his crew - is that it's a crap journal. It does not appear to be peer-review in anything except form. It's better than Betham, but it's not good in any sense. I doubt the reviewer(s) that handled Tony's paper are sufficiently knowledgeable to understand the issues at stack in the paper. The post by OSanderO illustrates this. Certainly my check on the research record of the editorial board left convinced they do not have any depth whatsoever.

Sorry about that.

And now we can see from Tony's post that we're back to where we started from - arguing at the JREF over basic points. Publication in this peer-review journal has not solved anything. And this is because their peer-review is clearly so weak they can not assure errors and mistakes are removed before publication. Only publication in a journal that can assure review by leading people in the world will do that.

So let's do this Tony. Get a research paper published in a major journal that everyone views as authoritative. Get it reviewed by proper people. I know this is a good start, but you're 12 years late. Honestly...we just expect more than a return to the JREF to hash out the errors and mistakes the journal editors missed.

 

[JSanderO]

It is only a mystery to you.

The actual steel temperatures needed to weaken the columns to the point of failure on the initiation floor would be about 650 degrees C minimum and there is no evidence of steel temperatures even remotely close to that.

The natural collapse theory cannot explain the first several stories of the collapse.

How do you know w hat the tempswere? And where they were applied? You're just asserting this.

There may be no evidence that YOU have access to or even NIST had... but that does not mean that the steel temps did not reach critical levels.

Heat and mechanical weakening destruction IS a natural mechanism...but it is a different one from the collapse of the lower stone cold part of the buildings.

 

[tsig]

This brief extract from the abstract has me worried from the start :

"The only complete hypothesis of the global collapse mechanism of the Towers is a successive flattening of stories associated with compressive column failure ..."

I find this disturbing:

This presentation is not so much about how the WTC towers failed, but about
how they could not fail. The objective is to eliminate erroneous concepts supported by false assumptions and
by the use of incorrect values for velocity, mass, and column resistance

Isn't "they could not fail" an erroneous concept?

 

[MarkLindeman]

I find this disturbing:

This presentation is not so much about how the WTC towers failed, but about
how they could not fail. The objective is to eliminate erroneous concepts supported by false assumptions and
by the use of incorrect values for velocity, mass, and column resistance

Isn't "they could not fail" an erroneous concept?

I construed the intended meaning to be, colloquially: "We're not saying how the towers failed, but Bazant got it wrong." (Or, if one prefers, "PCF is wrong.") If so, "...how they could not have failed" would have been an improvement, but still ambiguous. One wouldn't ordinarily expect the first sentence in a paper to be that foggy, but in fairness, Bazant can be pretty foggy himself.

The thesis that Bazant got it wrong may be somewhat less uninteresting than some JREF critics argue; I've seen no indication that it is actually interesting.

 

[LSSBB]

I find this disturbing:

This presentation is not so much about how the WTC towers failed, but about
how they could not fail. The objective is to eliminate erroneous concepts supported by false assumptions and
by the use of incorrect values for velocity, mass, and column resistance

Isn't "they could not fail" an erroneous concept?

Yes, because they believe their only hope is to prove a building can't collapse.

Strange but true.

 

[ozeco41]

Wouldn't the impact damage affect the initiation stage effect ....

Yes - it contributed to the cascade failure which culminated in the "top block' starting to fall downwards. However:

...the rest of the collapse?

...was distinctly separate process which in no way relied on what went before.

Apologies if this is a derail, but bonus points if you can tie in your answer to Tony Szamboti's paper.

Easy or hard depending on how you define "tie in". What I have just posted applies to what really happened. Tony's paper is not related to what really happened. It is an attempted rebuttal of Bazant's maths. "Attempted" because I refuse to support Tony's (and the other trolling) obfuscations by commenting either way on their evasions and derails. Whether they are right or not in applying maths to the artificial scenario is not related to the real world - as several members (eg DGM and LSSBB) have been saying.

"Remember that the goal of conspiracy rhetoric is to bog down the discussion, not to make progress toward a solution". That is what Tony and his allies are playing at. I will leave it to you to decide whether the motivation derives from deliberate deception or limited understanding. I suspect the latter.

 

[ozeco41]

...And now we can see from Tony's post that we're back to where we started from - arguing at the JREF over basic points. Publication in this peer-review journal has not solved anything. And this is because their peer-review is clearly so weak they can not assure errors and mistakes are removed before publication. Only publication in a journal that can assure review by leading people in the world will do that.

So let's do this Tony. Get a research paper published in a major journal that everyone views as authoritative. Get it reviewed by proper people. I know this is a good start, but you're 12 years late. Honestly...we just expect more than a return to the JREF to hash out the errors and mistakes the journal editors missed.

My foundation is far simpler Scott. You are basing credibility or lack thereof on the academic publishing standards including peer review. I respect the processes but they are irrelevant here.

All of Tony's papers which I have critiqued since late 2007 have major faults of logic. Peer review or not cannot change the fact that the claims of the papers are either false or IIRC in one instance not proven. This latest example is so narrowly focussed anti Bazant that it is totally irrelevant to what actually happened on 9/11. As several members have identified the trick relies on mixing real events with abstract modelling and doing it invalidly whether with intention to mislead or though limited understanding.

They could well be right within the narrow focus of the abstract scenario. BUT there is no logical linkage to real world and any inference of relevance to real events is misleading.

The garbage arguments could well pass legitimate peer review. Doing so would not by magic make the arguments valid.

 

[ozeco41]

...Isn't "they could not fail" an erroneous concept?

Yes. It is "lie by innuendo". What they can legitimately say is "they could not fail within the artificial abstract setting we are considering". The implication is that it applies to the real world. It doesn't.

And, like all implications, it is deniable. So wait for the denials.....if "they" do deny it will start to tie them down as to what they will explicitly state.

 

[Scott Sommers]

My foundation is far simpler Scott. You are basing credibility or lack thereof on the academic publishing standards including peer review. I respect the processes but they are irrelevant here.

All of Tony's papers which I have critiqued since late 2007 have major faults of logic. Peer review or not cannot change the fact that the claims of the papers are either false or IIRC in one instance not proven. This latest example is so narrowly focussed anti Bazant that it is totally irrelevant to what actually happened on 9/11. As several members have identified the trick relies on mixing real events with abstract modelling and doing it invalidly whether with intention to mislead or though limited understanding.

They could well be right within the narrow focus of the abstract scenario. BUT there is no logical linkage to real world and any inference of relevance to real events is misleading.

I am not an area specialist and can not gauge the expertise of engineering arguments. I may be able to follow your critique, but I could never produce it. In research areas that I feel I can demonstrate expertise (social science research methodology, test design, measurement), there are problems that have great importance to me and my colleagues, but probably not to you. This nonsense about the Kruger-Dunning Effect is an example. For me, this is trash science resulting from measurement artifact. This does not stop the idea from functioning well as a metaphor. Peer review is not intended to stop this kind of problem. It is intended to stop pseudo-science from masquerading as meaningful research. That it works well at doing this is shown by Jones and his crew being forced into publishing with Bentham, and the general impenetrability of high-ranked journals to 9/11 Truth and other trash-type pseudo science position.

Pseudoscience is forced in to low-ranking journals because they lack to the review process to detect problems like the ones and others are pointing to.

The garbage arguments could well pass legitimate peer review. Doing so would not by magic make the arguments valid.

No, it would not. There are many published findings that are never replicated. In psychology, it is most findings that are never replicated. Publication does not make the argument or even the findings valid. But an unwillingness of top journals to publish results almost certainly does mean there's something wrong with the research.

In fact, I suspect this is Tony's problem. I wonder if they've been working themselves down the food chain on this one. All of the published papers produced by Truthers exist at the very margins of scholarship. I can not believe this is because no one has tried to publish in better venues. Only Tony can answer whether or not his team submitted their paper or other versions to higher ranking journals. But my guess is that they did and IJPS is just where they ended up.

 

[Newtons Bit]

The actual steel temperatures needed to weaken the columns to the point of failure on the initiation floor would be about 650 degrees C minimum and there is no evidence of steel temperatures even remotely close to that.

500C-600C, actually.

 

[000063]

Why, because his beliefs align with yours?

I assume this is rhetorical.

It is only a mystery to you.

The actual steel temperatures needed to weaken the columns to the point of failure on the initiation floor would be about 650 degrees C minimum and there is no evidence of steel temperatures even remotely close to that.

Additionally, there are other problems for a heat weakened initiation that are explained in the paper.

I have also explained to you a number of times that ROOSD does not save the natural collapse theory because the collapse would not be self-propagating until further down in the process than the first several stories, as it needs to pick up steam. The natural collapse theory cannot explain the first several stories of the collapse.

And as I pointed out in the other thread, impact + fire. You know, the impact that would've scoured off most of the fireproofing? Also, do you have strong evidence of what the temperatures were? Because if not, then you're arguing from ignorance.

 

[DGM]

The last paragraph of the paper sums up the "truth movement".

The NIST report claims that the south exterior wall failed, as a result of prolonged heating
of the attached floor trusses on that side, and that this caused a propagation of failure across
the 98th floor resulting in a vertical drop, but they do not analyze the spread of failure in
either the horizontal or the vertical directions. They do provide the load redistribution from
this south wall failure, but that does not generate loads big enough to fail the remaining
columns across the floor. Bazant [2] does not explain the initial propagation of failure across
the 98th floor in any of his analyses, other than to assume uniform heating and collapse. The
reasons for the evenness of the initiation at the 98th floor and straight down fall in spite of
asymmetric damage, the smooth motion history while falling through successive floors, and
the promptness of collapse of the North Tower, remain yet to be explained.

12 years later, and they still want someone else to do the work.

Let me clue you in. The towers did actually collapse and there is a likely explanation. If you don't like it, come up with a better one.

I won't hold my breath.

 

[tsig]

Yes, because they believe their only hope is to prove a building can't collapse.

Strange but true.

As near as I can tell they expect the top floors to be slowly lowered to the other ones when the columns buckle.

 

[tsig]

Yes. It is "lie by innuendo". What they can legitimately say is "they could not fail within the artificial abstract setting we are considering". The implication is that it applies to the real world. It doesn't.

And, like all implications, it is deniable. So wait for the denials.....if "they" do deny it will start to tie them down as to what they will explicitly state.

Well since I've seen truthers argue that the building could not have fallen under any circumstances (moon sized rubble anyone) I'm not sure about your additional words. We shall see.