[Moderated]Another engineer criticizes NIST & FEMA

[DGM]

Ok Max.

Apollo20;
Do you care to field my question?

 

[technoextreme]

This engineered phreato-thermatic explosion provided added energy to knock off SFRM from many different types of steel members and components.

What the hell does ground water have to do with this explosion? In all seriousness. I looked the words up in a dictionary. Answer that question.

The thermite was designed not to cut, melt, or slice the steel, but to heat-weaken it, by heating the steel to about 600C (though some components were heated to 1100C).

Actually you don't need thermite to get the weakened steal. All you need is a large amount of fuel.

 

[DGM]

What the hell does ground water have to do with this explosion? In all seriousness. I looked the words up in a dictionary. Answer that question.

He needs lots of water to produce the rust he needs........... Don't ask........

 

[~enigma~]

What the hell does ground water have to do with this explosion? In all seriousness. I looked the words up in a dictionary. Answer that question.

If he used the proper name maybe you can see why water is needed. He made up the term phreato-thermatic but the proper term is phreatomagmatic

 

[Max Photon]

Max Photon explains why he chose "phreato-thermatic explosion"

What the hell does ground water have to do with this explosion? In all seriousness. I looked the words up in a dictionary. Answer that question.

Very well.

Here is an excerpt from a post of mine, the link to which can be found here:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2757227#post2757227


* * *

"...the improvised thermite, which in the presence of water, created a spectacular phreato-thermatic explosion!


Phreato means ground water, or underground water.


Some object to my phrase, saying that is should be called a phreato-magmatic explosion, in which ground water meets magma (or something molten), creating a steam - or littoral - explosion.


I believe phreato-thermatic is more appropriate.

Underground can also mean clandestine.

Phreato = clandestinely-placed water.

Also, the reaction I propose creates more than just a steam explosion.

A thermite reaction is twice as hot as orange flowing magma.

A DU-penetrator is twice as hot still.
[Note: I no longer need the DU penetrator.]

At these high temperature, water is energetically driven past the steam phase, and is broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen.

This creates a colorless hydrogen explosion (as seen in the thermite/ice explosion videos).

So a phreato-thermatic explosion has more bang than a phreato-magmatic (steam) explosion.

Last, I use thermatic instead of thermitic because the reaction I propose includes sulfur from the building material, in particular, from the gypsum.

Phreato-thermatic explosion."

* * *


I hope that clarifies my choice of words.

Max

---

 

[Max Photon]

Alright! Who spiked MAX-MIHOP with AP? Whoever did it...to the moon!

MAXWELL:

Max MIHOP surely means AP-spiked SFRM as well...........

Apollo20,

I am not sure I follow you.

MAX-MIHOP is Maxwell C. Photon's particular model.

It so happens that MAX-MIHOP is similar in many respects - minus the catalyst - to APOLLO20-MIHOP, an elegant model using ammonium-perchlorate-spiked SFRM.

Are you seeing more overlap than I do?

Is your model starting to incorporate some of MAX-MIHOP's cunning innovations, hmmmm?

If so, I'd love to hear about it.

(I'd also like to have little hidden web-cams to see others' reactions.)


There is a beautiful saying:

The information is in the errors.

I think it would be fun to try and articulate MAX-MIHOP and APOLLO20-MIHOP as succinctly as possible, and subject them to some of the anomalies described so beautifully by NIST in NCSTAR 1-5A/9/C.

May the best fit win.


I say it all the time: I can switch models in a flash; I am beholden to nothing.

If AP explains the 10-minute metal fire, the pressure pulses, the 7 intense smoke releases, etc., then MAX-MIHOP will plunder your model for the good parts. (It's like a PacMan game out there.)


If there is something better, I want to know about it.

If my models are winning, I want to know about that too.


Cheers!

Max

---

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

The thermite was linked and ignited by thermite-dusted shock-tube, and the shock-tube was remotely ignited by laser from WTC7.

I still don't understand why they didn't just use the laser to cut the columns. Think of all the tax money that could have been saved; money that could have been used for further tax cuts for the rich.

By controlling where and when columns spewed out burning thermite onto piles of debris, demolition planners were able to create the illusion of intense fires migrating across the faces, hots spots and cold spots (which created differential heating, and buckling) and other phenomena.

And the smoke came from? (Why am I even asking this question?)

 

[technoextreme]

Phreato means ground water, or underground water.

Phreato just means ground water. Nothing more than that.

At these high temperature, water is energetically driven past the steam phase, and is broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen.

This creates a colorless hydrogen explosion (as seen in the thermite/ice explosion videos).

No the thermite ice explosions that your seeing isn't caused by hydrogen. It's just a steam explosion.

 

[GregoryUrich]

Yes, Kevin Ryan has been telling this lie for some time. I cover it on Page 19 of my whitepaper.

The NIST Report says that the aggregate KE of impacting fragments need to be roughly 1 MJ (actually they say 0.1 to 1 MJ) to shake loose a square meter of SFRM. But this does not mean that the SFRM absorbs all of this energy. The vast majority of energy remains to damage the structure underneath or ricochet the impacting fragments into other SFRM somewhere else.

Kevin Ryan not only uses 1 MJ / m², disingenuously using the top of the range, but also assumes all of that energy is absorbed. If a three-quarter inch layer of SFRM could do that, we should use it as armor on main battle tanks.

However, since this is "Bash NIST Day," I will add that I don't understand why they used energy and not momentum in the above expression. I believe that momentum is actually the correct quantity, and their use of KE leads to further confusion. Probably has no impact at all on their overall conclusions, though.

In NCSTAR1-5D, NIST suggests that 66% of the airplanes KE was transferred into the building's KE (movement of the building). This would mean that only 34% of the KE is left to actually damage the building and SFRM, unless of course the movement of the building caused damage.

I find nowhere else in NIST, including the 1-2 Airplane Impact Analysis series, that this is taken into account. In fact, they compare the NIST results to Wierzbicki's study which applied the entire energy to destroying the airplane and damaging the building and had fairly similar results.

 

[rwguinn]

In NCSTAR1-5D, NIST suggests that 66% of the airplanes KE was transferred into the building's KE (movement of the building). This would mean that only 34% of the KE is left to actually damage the building and SFRM, unless of course the movement of the building caused damage.

I find nowhere else in NIST, including the 1-2 Airplane Impact Analysis series, that this is taken into account. In fact, they compare the NIST results to Wierzbicki's study which applied the entire energy to destroying the airplane and damaging the building and had fairly similar results.

So, that energy just....disappears?

 

[Apollo20]

NIST 1-5D states:

"To assess the response of the tower at the end of the impact, it was necessary to consider the kinetic energy transferred from the airplane to the tower. .... It was assumed that two-thirds of the energy was transferred from the airplane to the structure."

This means that the aircraft itself absorbed one third of the impact energy, basically by being shredded...

 

[GregoryUrich]

So, that energy just....disappears?

NIST doesn't say. I would assume the KE (swaying of the building) is absorbed by the visco-elastic dampers and dissipated as heat. This would mean that the energy is no longer available to damage the building.

 

[technoextreme]

So, that energy just....disappears?

No. It just gets converted into some other form of energy. If the building rocks back and forth that energy gets dissipated in the form of heat.

This means that the aircraft itself absorbed one third of the impact energy, basically by being shredded...

Im assuming that the flying pieces of shrapnel includes the 2/3 of the energy that damaged the building. Right?

 

[rwguinn]

NIST 1-5D states:

"To assess the response of the tower at the end of the impact, it was necessary to consider the kinetic energy transferred from the airplane to the tower. .... It was assumed that two-thirds of the energy was transferred from the airplane to the structure."

This means that the aircraft itself absorbed one third of the impact energy, basically by being shredded...

Thank you fot the quote.
So, Gregory Urich... How does one get from "the kinetic energy transferred from the airplane to the tower. .... It was assumed that two-thirds of the energy was transferred from the airplane to the structure" to "NIST suggests that 66% of the airplanes KE was transferred into the building's KE (movement of the building). "
The energy ransfer was energy transfer. It takes a different comprehension to read "..energy was transferred from the airplane to the structure" as "KE energy was transferred from the airplane to KE of the structure"

 

[cloudshipsrule]

If there is something better, I want to know about it.

If my models are winning, I want to know about that too.

FYI, the better model is that airplanes hit the buildings, the damage and fire initiated collapse. Yours is pretty good too, though.

 

[GregoryUrich]

No. It just gets converted into some other form of energy. If the building rocks back and forth that energy gets dissipated in the form of heat.
Im assuming that the flying pieces of shrapnel includes the 2/3 of the energy that damaged the building. Right?

NIST 1-5D states:

"To assess the response of the tower at the end of the impact, it was necessary to consider the kinetic energy transferred from the airplane to the tower. .... It was assumed that two-thirds of the energy was transferred from the airplane to the structure."

This means that the aircraft itself absorbed one third of the impact energy, basically by being shredded...

In NCSTAR1-5D (p.43-44), NIST very clearly states that 66% of the energy goes into the KE (= 1/2 x mv^2) of the building. I.e. the building (or rather some portion of it) and the airplane are moving together at 42.3 ft/s at the end of impact. What happens to this energy after that point is not discussed.

This part of the NIST reports seems to be one of the weakest. On p. 45 they calculate the accelleration for the building based on a velocity of 42.3 ft/s after 0.63 and get 0.25g (2.46 m/s^2). The minimum accelleration to attain 42.3 ft/s in 0.63 seconds is around 67 ft/s^2 or more than 2g. If the accelleration was constant (it was higher earlier in the impact) the building would be displaced around 13 ft which should have been visible on the videos.

T. Wierzbicki et al. estimated that the energy for destroying the aircraft was 586 MJ. The total KE for the planes was 2540 MJ and 3658 MJ for WTC1 and WTC2 respectively. This gives 16-23% of KE for destroying the planes. So only 11-18% would be left for flying debris.

To summarize, I think NIST's big mistake was guessing that 66% of the planes KE was tranferred to the tower in the form of KE.

 

[pomeroo]

WildCan't,

I believe the point is that even though Flight 175 struck the tower wingtip to wingtip, 175 struck the tower off-center, thereby exciting torsional harmonics.

These harmonics absorbed energy.

These harmonics ought to be accounted for.

Stay tuned!

Max

---

Gee, Max, imagine if the real scientists knew the stuff you make up. NIST, for example, could have explained why one Tower remained standing longer than the other by showing that the angles at which the planes hit made a difference.

What? NIST did exactly that?

Never mind.

 

[pomeroo]

What-o DGM?


Here is what I see:


WTC2 Floor 81 had a UPS room.

The "UPS batteries" had iron instead of lead, and salt-water instead of acid. The "UPS batteries" were in fact rust generators.

When Flight 175 hit the tower, the front landing gear penetrated the rust generators, throwing up a screen of iron oxide and water into the oncoming shattered aluminum.

(The absorption of the jet's energy by the rust generators might account for the "catcher's mitt" effect Apollo20 commented on earlier.)

Naturally-occurring, small thermite sparks ignited a thermite reaction in the presence of water, creating a phreato-thermatic explosion (which in turn helped to drive a fuel-air explosion.)

This engineered phreato-thermatic explosion provided added energy to knock off SFRM from many different types of steel members and components.


Incidentally, the phreato-thermatic explosion also helped to create a spectacular visual input signal, that would be fed into the media, to excite resonance in such harmonics as blind hatred, racism, irrational jingoism, flag-wrapping, belligerence, and so forth. These necessary illusions were required to manufacture consent to illegally invade other sovereign nations, and install a police state here in the SubprimeHomeLand.

The phreato-thermatic explosion also created some pools of molten iron on the impact floors, which pooled at low spots, heated the trusses through the concrete, which caused the floors to sag even more, encouraging more pooling, thereby creating a dynamic floor-loading mechanism.


The rust generators created a "debris shadow" - the Cold Spot.

It was planned that debris on either side of the Cold Spot would collect at under column splices - which were engineered to become hot spots.


Thermite had been planted at perimeter connections: column splices, spandrel splices, floor truss seats, and gusset seats.

The thermite was simply poured into box columns and spandrel-splice gaps.

For the floor truss seats and gusset seats, the thermite was wrapped in paper and black plastic.

The thermite was linked and ignited by thermite-dusted shock-tube, and the shock-tube was remotely ignited by laser from WTC7.

Note that the thermite-dusted shock-tube was able to light the planted thermite directly, and that the planted thermite was able to ignite out-lines of (other) shock-tube. In other words, the planted thermite could serve as a one-to-many relay.


The thermite was designed not to cut, melt, or slice the steel, but to heat-weaken it, by heating the steel to about 600C (though some components were heated to 1100C).

If steel was heated well before collapse initiation, it cooled, and became more brittle.

If the steel was still hot at collapse initiation, the steel would have been ductile.

By controlling the variables of time and temperature, a natural-looking spectrum of failure modes was engineered.


Depending on where the thermite was planted - that is, depending on the splice or connection - different phenomena were observed on the exterior as the thermite burned.


Thermite at floor truss seats produced flames and smoke at the base of windows.


Thermite at gusset seats produced flames, and bright flashes at the "tops of windows". (NIST should have said at the "bottom of spandrels.")

Thermite at gusset seats caused the visco-elastic dampers to burn, which created black smoke to mask the white aluminum-oxide ash.


Thermite in most box columns was used in small quantities. But it was enough to blow the bolt-access-hole covers off, creating NIST's unexplained "pressure pulses"

Thermite was packed into WTC2/81/301, and was the source of the 10-minute metal fire about which NIST dribbled in its bib.

Burning thermite spewed out of this column (and others) onto debris piles, creating NIST's "fires burning on piles of debris" or similar.

By controlling where and when columns spewed out burning thermite onto piles of debris, demolition planners were able to create the illusion of intense fires migrating across the faces, hots spots and cold spots (which created differential heating, and buckling) and other phenomena.

The iron from column 301 accounts for much of the metal flows.


Thermite in spandrel splice gaps accounts from the white glows on top of spandrels, and at least one of the WTC2 metal flows.


The ignition of all of the above in timed sequences accounts for the "steam pipe organ" effects, the smoke puffs, the pressure pulses, the metal fire, the metal flows, the falling debris, the intense smoke release, the fires that violate normal fire behavior, the intense white glows, the white "smoke", the hanging objects changing location, and on and on.



The way to think of the dampers is that they were one of several exploitable susceptibilities:

- Flammable visco-elastic dampers
- A325 column splice bolts
- Thin spandrel splice plates
- Top chords at truss seats


Never ever forget - the pre-engineered narrative called for:

Loss of SFRM allowed trusses to be heated from below, which caused them to sag, which pulled perimeter columns inward, which caused the columns to bow, which caused them to fail, which initiated the collapse of WTC2.

NIST is leaving out that thermite was used to heat-weaken steel connections.

So the weakening of the visco-elastic dampers was just one step in causing the floors to sag in a manner consistent with the narrative.

Plausible deniability required it.


Remember, it is not the collapse, but collapse initiation that is of interest.

The visco-elastic dampers had a role in the engineering of the collapse initiation.


Max

---

Max, you neglected to mention that no thermite was used at the WTC complex.

 

[cmcaulif]

The minimum accelleration to attain 42.3 ft/s in 0.63 seconds is around 67 ft/s^2 or more than 2g. If the accelleration was constant (it was higher earlier in the impact) the building would be displaced around 13 ft which should have been visible on the videos.

This is not quite accurate, the building will not be displaced 13 ft, nor anywhere near it. In this study:

Structural Responses of World Trade Center under Aircraft Attacks. Omika, Yukihiro.; Fukuzawa, Eiji.; Koshika, Norihide. Journal of Structural Engineering v. 131 no1 (January 2005) p. 6-15

The accelerations and displacements are calculated for the building, and they find that WTC 1 and 2 experienced maximum accelerations of 2g and 3g respectively, which corresponded to displacements of approx 30cm(.98ft) on the impact floor and 50cm(1.64ft) at the top floor.

 

[Dave Rogers]

To summarize, I think NIST's big mistake was guessing that 66% of the planes KE was tranferred to the tower in the form of KE.

It seems fairly clear to me from reading NCSTAR 1-5D that the group working in ceiling tile damage needed a value for the transfer of kinetic energy in advance of the group working on modelling the aircraft impact, so they took 66% as a best guess at that stage. That value is only used in assessing ceiling tile damage. If I had been doing the analysis I would have tried to parameterise the result and normalise it to whatever more correct value arose from the impact modelling, but that seems not to have been done. I didn't go into the report in enough detail to see how sensitive the results were to the KE transfer.

One question I would ask is what vibrational modes of the structure were excited by the impulse delivered by the airplane impact. Some of the higher order modes may have coupled into the floor trusses enough to cause significant SFRM loss, especially coupled with debris damage; I wouldn't know whether this is feasible because it isn't my specialism.

Dave