What are your thoughts on Steven Dusterwald's AE911Truth Video?

[Dog Town]

What are they doing?

Yep, five!

 

[ozeco41]

@Georgio. Greetings again - clearly you have been thinking about what I said so I can now take the next step.

You have asked two key questions - one of them repeated. Let's take this one first:

But isn't progressive overload under reasonably foreseeable conditions (fire) what is actually meant to have caused WTC7 to fail?

...It did happen with WTC7 - failure was starting hours before the actual collapse and all occupants escaped. Exactly in accordance with the philosophy Dusterwald identifies as desirable. The looming collapse did involve ductile failures - one example being the observed bulging.

Dusterwald is confused over sequence - so lets deal with that - leave the "connections or members failures" confusion till later.

The confusion over "sequence" is that he is trying to claim that slow progressive ductile failure should apply in the later stage of global collapse. It is a false comparison. The collapse started slowly as per the philosophy Dusterwald has quoted. Then it got faster - after the people were long gone.

He is mismatching what was designed for the early stages of collapse and which actually worked in that early stage with what happened in the later stages.

Now the situation for the "Twins" was different. The slow lead-up ductile early failure is premised on normal progression of fires allowing, ideally, time for escape of occupants and starting of fire control measures.

That wasn't allowed to happen at the twins - which brings us to your second question:

I don't think I understand this. What is 'trauma intervention'?

There was a "traumatic" (A serious injury...as from violence or an accident) "intervention" (interposing something into the ongoing arrangements).

The intervention by crashing a plane into the building. The trauma includes serious damage to structure and instant starting of large fires on multiple storeys. Neither of those allowed for in the design. PLUS the trauma both disabled fire-fighting AND blocked escape.

So the "ductile failure" period to allow escape was thwarted by the intervening trauma. There was no stage of "early warning ductile failure" - the aircraft impact prevented that early stage, prevented escape and Dusterwald is wrong again in claiming that the later stage of rapid global collapse should have been slow progressive ductile failure.

Bottom line therefore is that Dusterwalds "comparison" is again invalid.

He claims an idea for one stage of collapse then compares it to a totally different stage - invalid comparison.

Since Dusterwald's starting premise - comparison of two types of collapse - is false then all the claims he bases on that false comparison are also invalid.

I can still categorise the later claims but....is that explanation clear enough for this "Step 2"?

But, again, isn't this what is supposed to have happened to building 7?

That is Question 3 but it repeats Q1 and it is based in the same misinterpretation.

Bottom Line for this Explanation So Far:
Dunkerwald is wrong to claim for WTC7 that there was not a period of ductile failure allowing escape of occupants; for the "Twins" he is ignoring that the initial trauma was way outside reasonable design envelope and prevented a slow "ductile failure" lead in period AND for all three he is wrong to compare the requirements for the early stages of failure to what happens in a later global collapse.

And that is only his confusion of "stages" and "sequencing". His confusion over "members" or "connection" failures can wait a later post - if we need it.

He is one very confused engineer.

I may be simpler at this stage if I post a commented critique identifying his errors - what do you think?

 

[ozeco41]

This is the relevant sections of the Dusterwald transcript. My comments put "in-line" in blue for simplicity:

(NOTE: The dominant problem is that he confuses what should happen at the very start of a fire initiated possible collapse with what actually happened at a much later stage of the actual WTC collapses. He plays "switching horses" AKA "moving goalposts" and gets two different stages mixed up. This post is to sort out the stage mix up confusions. I'll leave his other problems for later post(s))

I first became aware of the problems of the official account of the collapse when I saw a DVD online from Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth. They pointed out various problems with the official story and the ones that caught my attention were the rapid failure of the connections in order for the building to come down at the rate that it did. <<Clearly he is discussing the rapid stage of "progression" to Global Collapse.

The basic philosophy of the building code in the last 75 to 80 years has been to ensure ductile failure of the members to provide for the public safety. Under this philosophy, members that are overloaded will deform elastically, within the elastic range of the material, with increasingly large deformations and deflections and after the yield point the members reach it will go into a plastic range, where the steel stretches without any increase in load. This gives rise to large deformations that are visible and apparent to the occupants of the structure, giving them warning of impending failure and gives them evidence of structural distress in progress, and again this gives them time to evacuate the structure. <<Equally clearly this is at the very earliest stages of an impending problem - way before the "global collapse" he referred to in previous paragraph. He is setting the scene for some "switching horses in mid stream" AKA goalpost moving.

The buildings at the World Trade Center, that did not occur. <<False claim for WTC7 - it did occur at WTC 7 and it could not occur for the "Twins" because it was bypassed by the Aircraft impact trauma The connections failed first, without any of the members exhibiting large deformations or deflections over 400 connections per second had to fail in order for the members to be released and for the structure to descend at almost free-fall rate. <<Again he is referring to the later stage of global collapse. BUT he is applying the criteria for the very earliest stage of possible collapse to the later global collapse stage of actual collapse. Taint "apples with apples". Also his whole concept of the relationship between "connection failure" and "large deformations" is nonsense but we can leave explanation of that for later if anyone wants it.

The actual failure mode of the structure showed that the connections were failing at over 400 connections per second for building number 7 and a similar number for buildings 1 and 2. <<global collapse stage This is in direct physical contradiction to the design of the building which ensured that the members went through large elastic and plastic deformations before the connections would fail. <<At the earliest stages - he has changed horse in mid stream OR shifted goalposts. Pick your own metaphor. In fact the connections were designed with a safety factor of 1.5 to 3 times the failure load for the member. This ensures that the member will always fail first, first in an elastic mode and then a plastic mode, and after the member has failed then the connection would still be intact. <<Leave all this part truth confusion of "member v connection" failures for now - it matters not at this stage of explanation.

So the failure of all these connections as the primary means of structural failure <<False premise therefore false claim is inconsistent with a natural gravitational collapse <<missing a couple of quantum leaps of logic - and he is wrong anyway. and indicates the presence of other agents which would dismember these connections. <<No way Jose - and still more quantum leaps missing logic.

[Skipping FOUR paragraphs on other aspects - we come to this gem]

This rapid failure of the connections would not allow for the required elastic deformations and plastic deformations of the members which would be required to fail, to make the connections fail. <<Utter hogwash. In lay persons language he is saying "Things cannot fail fast when hit by a ruddy great overload. Don't need to be an engineer to ROFLMAO that - if you hit it hard enough it will fail fast. This transfer of energy from the descending mass to the remaining structure, which would deform those members elastically and plastically, would remove energy from the descending mass and cause the descent to be at less than free-fall speed. <<Allow him a "near enough true" for now on that. Now, there's no method for making the connections fail through a natural gravitational collapse. <<his anal sphincter relaxed for that one to be extracted - a totally unsupported false bare assertion There had to be some agent that was destroying the connections in building number 7 at 400 connections per second,<< True - it is called falling weight plus gravity and the only thing that I can see that would be capable of doing this would be explosive devices at the connections.<<Time to get new eyeglasses (so he can see better) OR hand in his engineers licence.

Hey this works easier than trying to write explanations.

Does it work for you Georgio?

Any questions?

 

[tsig]

I do not understand how he thinks that the connections had to all fail at once, or in those numbers.

So the building is designed to fail slowly and one member will be left hanging out there not doing its job. The building is still in jeopardy of falling, right?

What the hell is the idiot's point?

Looks like he expects the columns to stretch like silly putty and the whole building to slowly deform rather like a cartoon.

As oz says he is operating in a area where there are no textbook solutions so he fills in with his fantasy.

 

[ozeco41]

...As oz says he is operating in a area where there are no textbook solutions so he fills in with his fantasy.

That's it. He could work for years doing "standard jobs" where he plugs numbers into a form (computer package these days - even sophisticated FEA). The form or the computer does the work and the right answers come out the end.

He never really needs to understand why. He never really did understand why. The fact that he has crazy understanding of the basics is never revealed whilst ever he sticks to rote learned standard "fill in the numbers" job procedures.

Then along comes something which is not standard and he tries to explain it using his poor comprehension of the foundation principles. And his thinking falls apart - as shown by this transcript.

It has all been just words to him for years. and he gets away with it until something more difficult shows up his faulty understanding.

And this is the result - as tsig says:

Looks like he expects the columns to stretch like silly putty and the whole building to slowly deform rather like a cartoon.

It's another sad example of my often stated hypothesis "truthers cannot think" - this one revealed brutally as a truther engineer who cannot think the engineering.

 

[beachnut]

So the failure of all these connections as the primary means of structural failure is inconsistent with a natural gravitational collapse and indicates the presence of other agents which would dismember these connections.

Other agents?
http://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/...age.jpg_gen/derivatives/display_600/image.jpg
http://media.tiff.net/contents/stills/other-agents-10.jpg
Which one?
Are all Gages cult experts idiots on engineering?

What is a natural gravitational collapse as pertains to a terrorist attack with a jet going 500 mph? Does that make sense?

No math, no physics, only some delusional opinions

Unable to do a new investigation because they make up stuff about the collapse. Instead of proving anything, they punt.

In my 37 years of experience as a structural engineer I've never seen modes of failure such as have been exhibited in the case of these buildings and that's why I feel that we need a new, independent investigation to explain the destruction of these three buildings.

The guy has all this experience, can't do an investigation himself, and asks for an independent investigation, and like you, he never read NIST?

 

[tsig]

Other agents?
http://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/...age.jpg_gen/derivatives/display_600/image.jpg
http://media.tiff.net/contents/stills/other-agents-10.jpg
Which one?
Are all Gages cult experts idiots on engineering?

What is a natural gravitational collapse as pertains to a terrorist attack with a jet going 500 mph? Does that make sense?

No math, no physics, only some delusional opinions

Unable to do a new investigation because they make up stuff about the collapse. Instead of proving anything, they punt.

The guy has all this experience, can't do an investigation himself, and asks for an independent investigation, and like you, he never read NIST?

That's the odd thing about all these "experts" who, like Gage himself, claim their professional knowledge gives them authority to pronounce reality wrong but never use that knowledge to do a new investigation.

 

[Georgio]

ozeco41, thank you so much for taking the time to write those two posts. Absolutely brilliant. Clear as crystal - I really feel like I understand why Steven Dusterwald's objections are not valid now. The crucial part of the argument that I was missing was understanding the distinctions between the different stages of collapse, just how limited the application of the failure modes are to the particular stage under consideration, and how you simply cannot apply the principles of one stage to another stage, and that really is what he seems to be doing.

What he's saying didn't happen, did happen (deformation of the members before failure of the connections), and it was never going to happen during the stage of collapse that he is mainly talking about. Thank you again - this is what I joined the JREF forum for.

I just wish I'd thought of that coloured writing 'in-line' technique myself as I would have suggested it initially!

 

[ozeco41]

ozeco41, thank you so much for taking the time to write those two posts. Absolutely brilliant. Clear as crystal - I really feel like I understand why Steven Dusterwald's objections are not valid now. The crucial part of the argument that I was missing was understanding the distinctions between the different stages of collapse, just how limited the application of the failure modes are to the particular stage under consideration, and how you simply cannot apply the principles of one stage to another stage, and that really is what he seems to be doing.

What he's saying didn't happen, did happen (deformation of the members before failure of the connections), and it was never going to happen during the stage of collapse that he is mainly talking about. Thank you again - this is what I joined the JREF forum for.

I just wish I'd thought of that coloured writing 'in-line' technique myself as I would have suggested it initially!

My pleasure Georgio.

My main interest on these forums is explaining the events. Especially the WTC collapses which call on my professional career expertise in civil/structural engineering and military engineering. It also helps that I have worked with and managed engineers who, like Dusterwald, "loose the plot".

I enjoyed the experience and I'm glad it worked for you.

Cheers.

 

[JSanderO]

Dusty seems to not understand the way continuous heat over wide areas will affect a steel frame. And of course the failure / collapse once critical state was passed was just room temperature mechanical destruction... fractured and broken joints being what happened to the frame... crushed and broken concrete and the rest mangled from mechanical collisions.

The initiation period likely involved elongation and warping from heat. This let to both loss of strength of the beam/braces. But more importantly.. pushed columns out of axial alignment. It didn't take too much movement to either shear the column to column connections... or cause web and flange crippling... and then that column can't carry load and everything it was carrying drops with little to no resistance.

Once a column dropped it offers a region where other braces can push columns around the dropped column line toward the column line that dropped. This alone would not necessarily initiate a runaway progressive collapse. But the same elongation warping process was warping and stress the entire frame... causing axial misalignments and entire column lines of floor/building coming down. This is probably what happened inside the core of the twins and once the core was collapse and those last column folded over like pretzels the skin was pushed like a stiff box out of alignment and it dropped.

No... hundreds or thousands of connections were not failing all at once at "initiation".. This was a process over time and when capacity was gone real visible movement could be observed. How much time? Who knows but for 7 it was quite a few hrs.

 

[ozeco41]

Dusty seems to not understand the way continuous heat over wide areas will affect a steel frame.

The transcript is full of far too many and vaguely defined errors to list and explain them all.

That is why I focussed on the main false premise - confusion of two stages - in my explanation for Georgio.

The second of Dusterwald's main errors is confusion of the relationship between "connection failure" and "member failure"

This single paragraph from the transcript shows clearly how he cross-contaminates his two main foundation errors:

The actual failure mode of the structure showed that the connections were failing at over 400 connections per second for building number 7 and a similar number for buildings 1 and 2. This is in direct physical contradiction to the design of the building which ensured that the members went through large elastic and plastic deformations before the connections would fail. In fact the connections were designed with a safety factor of 1.5 to 3 times the failure load for the member. This ensures that the member will always fail first, first in an elastic mode and then a plastic mode, and after the member has failed then the connection would still be intact.

If we explain the stages as "things before the building is falling" and "things which happend after it started to fall and was actually falling".

Both those two linked in his nonsense about "connections always survive" and "members always fail". Utter nonsense - and at several levels of misunderstanding. It could be an interesting exercise to separate the several layers of his psychological dilemma.



....but not here or now.

 

[JSanderO]

The transcript is full of far too many and vaguely defined errors to list and explain them all.

That is why I focussed on the main false premise - confusion of two stages - in my explanation for Georgio.

The second of Dusterwald's main errors is confusion of the relationship between "connection failure" and "member failure"

This single paragraph from the transcript shows clearly how he cross-contaminates his two main foundation errors:
If we explain the stages as "things before the building is falling" and "things which happend after it started to fall and was actually falling".

Both those two linked in his nonsense about "connections always survive" and "members always fail". Utter nonsense - and at several levels of misunderstanding. It could be an interesting exercise to separate the several layers of his psychological dilemma.



....but not here or now.

Dusty might think about eHarmony.com for connections! They make them very quickly I am told.