Hardfire: Physics of 9/11

[TruthersLie]

Tony, in this thread I haven't been arguing that the wings couldn't punch through the columns. I've been pointing out that the 'slug of fuel' model alone can't account for the damage to the walls. I believe that Mackey and Wieck were deliberately misleading the viewers when they made that claim. As far as I know, no model exists to show that the wings alone could have broken perimeter columns.

What part of "simplified model" do you still not understand?

In a simplified model, you SIMPLIFY the problem and objective to show what you are after.

This is NOT a full and complete analysis (NIST did that).

What is soooooooo freaking hard to understand? the Simplified or the model?

 

[TruthersLie]

Discuss the following:

For a model to predict the extent of damage in a collision, does that model have to account for all the damage or can it ignore any parts of the damage that are difficult to explain and inconvenient for the desired prediction?

There is your misunderstanding.

NO where in the discussion do they claim that they were predictign the extent of the damage.

They were showing that the fuel alone could have destroyed the columns in a simplified manner.

You seem to want a full indepth analysis... which it WASNT.

Do you have a reading disability? You seem to.

 

[TruthersLie]

A simple stress analysis can show that they could at the locations they hit the buildings and it has been done. Of course, we do see that the ends of the wings and top of the tail did not penetrate the building.

I know there was an analysis done by someone named Foo where I believe the analysis indicated that if the perimeter columns had 1 inch wall thickness there would not be complete penetration.

What isn't discussed much is that the wings were completely shredded by the perimeter columns and had very little if any impact on the core columns.

excuse me tony.

what exactly would 100 tons of shredded material do to those columns?

Please show that 100 tons of shredded materials moving at 500 mph across 2 or 3 floors wouldn't do "any impact on the core columns."

It should be easy to replicate...

I eagerly await your thesis. It should be rather simple.

Complete it, get it peer reviewed and you can have the FIRST paper refuting anything that NIST has said.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

excuse me tony.

what exactly would 100 tons of shredded material do to those columns?

Please show that 100 tons of shredded materials moving at 500 mph across 2 or 3 floors wouldn't do "any impact on the core columns."

It should be easy to replicate...

I eagerly await your thesis. It should be rather simple.

Complete it, get it peer reviewed and you can have the FIRST paper refuting anything that NIST has said.

You seem a bit hysterical here saying the wing material weighed 100 tons.

The entire aircraft weighed about 140 tons and the wings would have been about 35% of that or in the 45 ton range.

While they were being shredded going through the perimeter the momentum of the wings was reduced drastically.

The NIST has already done the work proving what I mentioned about the wings causing little damage to the central core.

Have you read the NIST report?

 

[Furcifer]

One of the stated aims of the Hardfire show was to focus entirely on the science. Now you want to bring up such things as eyewitnesses. Is that an admission that science on its own can't describe how the planes sliced through the buildings?

Only because your logic doesn't seem to follow from observation. You keep jumping from the fuel slug model to this empty wing couldn't penetrate theory. From observation, the wing, empty or full, penetrated the exterior. So either way you are wrong. That's on top of the fact you have yet to show the energy of the fuel slug alone wasn't enough to penetrate the exterior columns. All you've pointed out is the fuel slug couldn't penetrate the columns exactly as was observed.

I think we all agree that a slug of fuel in the exact shape of the tanks couldn't have created the pattern observed. There's obviously more at work here than just the fuel. What you fail to realize is that this isn't about the pattern, it's about the energy.

I'm just taking up the challenge that was issued on Hardfire:
R Mackey: "You need to show where we have made a mistake. You need to show where one of our assumptions is either wrong or grossly distorting the result..."

All you've shown is that this simplified model is simple.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

*shrugs*
Once the planes entered the buildings I'm not so sure the wings would have been all that relevant to the damage in the core. The plane would have been damaged beyond recognition and simply a high velocity mass of debris and fuel at that point. the mass issue is something the still escapes individuals such as bardamu who doubt that the planes had the capacity to penetrate the towers.

 

[twinstead]

What kind of idiot would doubt something with so much absolutely overwhelming evidence to support it? Yea, be interested in how it happened, study it, exclaim "Wow, I just can't believe that happened", but DENY it happened?

Ouch.

 

[TruthersLie]

You seem a bit hysterical here saying the wing material weighed 100 tons.

The entire aircraft weighed about 140 tons and the wings would have been about 35% of that or in the 45 ton range.

While they were being shredded going through the perimeter the momentum of the wings was reduced drastically.

The NIST has already done the work proving what I mentioned about the wings causing little damage to the central core.

Have you read the NIST report?

Oops... I missed the wing section there tony.

My bad.

Yet still we have 40 tons of shredded materials moving at 500 mph... what do you think they would do? Again, run yuor numbers through some peer review and you can prove NIST wrong.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

Oops... I missed the wing section there tony.

My bad.

Yet still we have 40 tons of shredded materials moving at 500 mph... what do you think they would do? Again, run yuor numbers through some peer review and you can prove NIST wrong.

How fast do you think the shredded wing section parts were moving after going through the perimeter?

Remember I said they would go through the perimeter when impacting it at 500 mph. My other point was that the wing parts did little to no major damage to the core columns because they were thoroughly broken up and slowed down by the collision with the perimeter. This wasn't true of the fuselage. It did impact the core.

The NIST did do an analysis on this that makes perfect sense. It doesn't sound like you have read it, and maybe you should before continuing to comment.

 

[TruthersLie]

How fast do you think the shredded wing section parts were moving after going through the perimeter?

Remember I said they would go through the perimeter when impacting it at 500 mph. My other point was that the wing parts did little to no major damage to the core columns because they were thoroughly broken up and slowed down by the collision with the perimeter. This wasn't true of the fuselage. It did impact the core.

The NIST did do an analysis on this that makes perfect sense. It doesn't sound like you have read it, and maybe you should before continuing to comment.

OH Tony.

1. I have only read about 2,000 pages of the NIST report. So compared to the real engineers here, I am a bit behind. So solly cholly.

2. I missed the part where you stated it was the wing.

3. now still at 35 to 50 tons of shredded materials at 500 mph.. you tell me what damage it would do... Since Nist did their analysis (which I am currently reading), and I agree with their conclusions, I am just making sure you agree with their conclusions.

After all you state they are wrong repeatedly, in so many (incorrect) ways, and still don't produce anything which shows it....

but I'm glad to see you think the no planer is also full of crap. Thank you for that agreement (hell has now frozen over).

 

[Tony Szamboti]

OH Tony.

1. I have only read about 2,000 pages of the NIST report. So compared to the real engineers here, I am a bit behind. So solly cholly.

2. I missed the part where you stated it was the wing.

3. now still at 35 to 50 tons of shredded materials at 500 mph.. you tell me what damage it would do... Since Nist did their analysis (which I am currently reading), and I agree with their conclusions, I am just making sure you agree with their conclusions.

After all you state they are wrong repeatedly, in so many (incorrect) ways, and still don't produce anything which shows it....

but I'm glad to see you think the no planer is also full of crap. Thank you for that agreement (hell has now frozen over).

I do not disagree with everything in the NIST report and have never said I did. I think a good job was done showing the aircraft penetration and damage it caused.

What I don't agree with is the claim that aircraft damage and fire are what caused the collapses to initiate in the buildings and for them to completely collapse.

 

[9/11 Chewy Defense]

What I don't agree with is the claim that aircraft damage and fire are what caused the collapses to initiate in the buildings and for them to completely collapse.

But Tony, you only know building collapses, you're not qualified as a CD expert to make any kind of decision that they came down by CDs.

If you have no CD qualifications, you only have an opinion & nothing more than that.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Good god man whether he has CD qualifications or not is wholly irrelevant to the validity of his argument. Stop reverse engineering the appeal to authority...

 

[Tony Szamboti]

But Tony, you only know building collapses, you're not qualified as a CD expert to make any kind of decision that they came down by CDs.

If you have no CD qualifications, you only have an opinion & nothing more than that.

I design structures for a living and in order to ensure performance one needs to know what failure modes can occur, how they cause failure, and the overall effects of the failure. CD is nothing more than causing the failure in a controlled way to produce a desired effect.

 

[9/11 Chewy Defense]

I design structures for a living and in order to ensure performance one needs to know what failure modes can occur, how they cause failure, and the overall effects of the failure. CD is nothing more than causing the failure in a controlled way to produce a desired effect.

Yeah but Tony, nothing on 9/11 was ever in a "controlled" manner. You had pieces of building hitting other buildings & such, not really a "CD" atmosphere ya know!

 

[Bluesky]

I design structures for a living and in order to ensure performance one needs to know what failure modes can occur, how they cause failure, and the overall effects of the failure. CD is nothing more than causing the failure in a controlled way to produce a desired effect.

Tony,
While I disagree with nearly everything you say, I do not disagree with this.

What is your opinion about why nearly all the structural engineers that design tall buildings for a living and all the structural engineers who worked down on the search and recovery and who saw the impact, the damage, and the debris have come to the opinion that there was no CD? It seems to me that your opinion is almost unique.

Are you another Galileo who is going to explain to these structural engineers, in CD terms, how the earth revolves around the sun? You have not had much success so far.

...And what is the tallest building you designed?

 

[BigAl]

I design structures for a living and in order to ensure performance one needs to know what failure modes can occur, how they cause failure, and the overall effects of the failure. CD is nothing more than causing the failure in a controlled way to produce a desired effect.

Have you ever been tasked to design an all-steel building which was to sustain a fire without any sprinkler and no water for firefighting? Not just stay up long enough for an evacuation but to remain standing when the embers die out?

How would you do that and how would it differ from how WTC7 was constructed?

 

[ozeco41]

Tony,
While I disagree with nearly everything you say, I do not disagree with this.

What is your opinion about why nearly all the structural engineers that design tall buildings for a living and all the structural engineers who worked down on the search and recovery and who saw the impact, the damage, and the debris have come to the opinion that there was no CD? It seems to me that your opinion is almost unique.

Are you another Galileo who is going to explain to these structural engineers, in CD terms, how the earth revolves around the sun? You have not had much success so far.

...And what is the tallest building you designed?

In my experience a large proportion of structural engineers can easily become fixated on a minor aspect of design and lose sight of the bigger picture.

The issue currently dominating discussion of Tony's material here is his "Missing Jolt" paper. That paper has lost sight of the bigger picture. It wrongly interprets the actual collapse mechanisms which occurred in similar fashion with the two tower collapses on 9/11.

The critical stages of those collapse mechanisms were:
(1) an initial failure of the impact zone which was a rolling cascade process which quickly but still progressively allowed the "top block" to start to descend.
(2) That descent transitioned into a global collapse which occurred when the falling top block fell inside the outer tube of columns and (mostly) missing or surrounding or partly striking a core which was effectively very much weakened by the manner of load application under failure.
(3) Then pancaking of the floors resulted in a rapid sequential global collapse.

Tony's "missing jolt" is premised on a clear stage of falling top block - after it started to move - meeting a strong resistance. That strong resistance was not there so Tony concludes "no jolt therefore demolition".

Wrong on two parts of the basic premises. Hence my earlier comment that "structural engineers get lost in detail and lose the big picture".

Those two parts which are wrong in time reversed order:

(1)There was no resistance significant to cause any large jolt which would noticeable/measurable by Tony's technique. No outer columns to cause it, few bits of core; AND

(2) There was no free fall of the top block OR fall close to free fall to create the impetus which could crush the columns - but it didn't have to crush columns. The falling mass was more than sufficient to overcome friction and shear the floor joist to column connectors.

The falling impetus was overwhelming for the latter task - overcome floor connectors of one floor at a time plus a bit of residual core strength and some friction of top block on columns.

BUT no matter how large that falling impetus the floor joist connections et al were not strong enough to resist sufficient to show measurable jolt.

So the missing jolt explanation fails like so many in that it does not apply to the mechanism of collapse which actually occurred.

And that is the point where I usually decline to pursue the particular hypothesis further. It does not match the real world of 9/11 so forget it.

(With the thermate claims; -ite; -ate or nano- I don't even bother going that far. There is simply no way that any of the three could cause or contribute to the collapse mechanisms which actually happened WTC 1 or 2 even if we ignore the logistic 99.9% improbability of -ite or -ate being able to be used.)

 

[Newtons Bit]

I design structures for a living and in order to ensure performance one needs to know what failure modes can occur, how they cause failure, and the overall effects of the failure. CD is nothing more than causing the failure in a controlled way to produce a desired effect.

Are you implying that you design the structural systems of a building? Aren't you a mechanical engineer?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

Are you implying that you design the structural systems of a building? Aren't you a mechanical engineer?

No, I didn't say I do building design. However, the same rules apply to other structures.

I am a mechanical engineer and maybe should have been more explicit and said I design, or in my career have designed, various structures for use on aircraft, ships, and communication towers. I have designed large broadcast antennas, antenna test towers, and large test fixtures which were loaded in various ways.

At one point I worked for RCA broadcast, which was the company that designed and built the 360 foot tall antenna stack which was mounted on the top of WTC 1.