But not smart enough to remember to not publish information that would show that they were fudging the results?
Smart enough to put all the data in the reports such that they cannot be accused of lying, but never explicitly saying "we had to increase the combustible load against our own estimations in order to get the fires hot enough to cause the steel to weaken to a critical point." But this statement is true.
Have you looked at the table on page 46 of NCSTAR1-5F? It lists the range of estimates for the combustible fuel load as 17 to 34 kg/m2 (3.5 to 7 lb/ft2) with a mid-range of 25 kg/m2 (5.1 lb/ft2).
Yes. So what? If your speedometer says 400mph does that mean your car can go 400mph? Changing the input parameters doesn't have an effect on their "reasonable estimates" of fuel load. If you think it does, I'd like to see why you believe that.
I only skimmed through the report, so I guess I missed all the reasons NOT to increase the fuel load. I personally never got the sense that NIST was claiming that 4 lb/ft2 was pretty certain to be the correct value. On page 51 of NCSTAR1-5F, they state "It was unclear what the combustible load was in the various core areas". But again, I only skimmed NCSTAR1-5F and haven't really touched any of the rest of the report (since my only goal was to throw out possible ideas, not to defend the NIST report to the death) and if I read it carefully I might draw a different conclusion.
“A number of preliminary simulations had been performed to gain insight into the factors having the most influence on the severity of the fires. The most influential was the mass of combustibles per unit of floor area (fuel load)….”(NCSTAR 1, 126)
“… it would have been possible to further refine or ‘tune’ the properties of the simulated workstations to better match the experiments, but this would have been a waste of time and resources since the workstations were merely convenient surrogates for a variety of other combustible furnishings found throughout the buildings. Indeed, sensitivity studies revealed that the total mass loading of combustibles was more important than its composition.”(NCSTAR 1-5F, 36)
“Simulations performed with doubled fuel loads slowed the fire spread well below the observed rates. Combined with the above results, this suggested that the estimated overall combustible load of 4 lb/ft2 was reasonable.”(NCSTAR 1, 129)
“NIST estimated the combustible fuel loading on these floors to have been about 4 lb/ft2 (20 kg/m2), or about 60 tons per floor. This was somewhat lower than found in prior surveys of office spaces. The small number of interior walls, and thus minimal amount of combustible interior finish, and the limited bookshelf space account for much of the differences.”(NCSTAR 1, 77)
“The principal combustibles on the fire floor were workstations. The total combustible fuel load on the WTC floors was about 4 lb/ft2. Higher combusted fuel loadings resulted in slower fire spread rates that did not match the patterns observed in the photographic evidence. Under these higher combusted fuel loadings, the fires likely would not have reached the south side of WTC 1 in the time needed to cause inward bowing and collapse initiation.”(NCSTAR 1, 183)
“… the simulated fires encircled the building in roughly the same amount of time as the actual fires support[ing] the estimate of the overall combustible load, 20 kg/m2 (4 lb/ft2). The fires burned for roughly 20 min to 30 min in any one location, consistent with the visual evidence (NIST NCSTAR 1-5A) and the multiple workstation fire experiments performed at NIST (Chapter 4).”(NCSTAR 1-5F, 107)
I believe that page 78 of NICSTAR1-5F explains the reasoning. And yes, they were trying to create a more severe fire. They also explain why.
I've been over this before with cmcaulif. If you can find a "reason" that supports increasing the estimate, please show me. Please keep in mind what you would think if I was trying to
convince you of the opposite conclusion with this line of reasoning. The fact remains that there isn't really a good reason given. Just "we wanted to span the range of probable gas temperatures." But how are these "probable gas temperatures" if they had to ignore their estimates or the available evidence to get them?
Are you aware that they only tested the higher fuel load for WTC1? Does that mean only WTC1 was destroyed by a CD?
I'm sincerely glad to be having this conversation with you, but please read earlier posts. Yes. I'm fully aware. Are you aware that they had to return damaged office furniture to its undamaged state except in the direct path of the aircraft "in order to create a more severe fire"?
“In Case D, the furnishings were restored to their ‘undamaged’ state, except in the immediate vicinity of the airplane impact, to create a more severe fire.“(NCSTAR 1-5F, 87)
They also had to go against the visual evidence in order to get Case D.
“The heavy concentration of combustibles in the corner [Case C] produced a fire that lasted an entire hour in that location, consistent with visual evidence.”(NCSTAR 1-5F, 87)
and
“Because the airplane swept through a large expanse of the east side of the building, the fires were not as intense as would be expected along the east face, presumably because much of the furnishings were heavily damaged and a considerable mass was ‘plowed’ into the northeast corner, where the fires burned most intensely for the entire hour before collapse.”(NCSTAR 1-5F, 107)
So either NIST is producing good estimates and going against them, or they don't know what they're doing, in which case, none of their findings are useful. Either way, Cases B & D don't fit.
Which do you think it is?
Not to mention convincing essentially all the structural engineers and fire protection engineers in the world.
They obviously didn't convince them all--as you noticed, some very important ones like Quintiere have pointed out some major problems. Besides, experts are often wrong. If you can't find anything wrong with my interpretation of their data except that "all the experts haven't dissented" then maybe it's time to re-evaluate the reasons you put so much stock in the NIST report.
Your statement is a false dichotomy. NIST was not the first to propose the airplane impact damage + fire damage -> building collapse theory, and it is not necessary to believe every word of the NIST to feel comfortable with the conclusion that a combination of impact damage and fire damage led to the collapses.
What statement is a false dichotomy?
It certainly IS necessary to believe the simulations used good data in "re-creating" the collapses because that's the
only place the heat-induced collapse theory is demonstrated. If the simulations used crap data, how can we rely on their results for an answer to why the towers collapsed? We can't.
