The concept of some subject to stress beyond its design envelop and failing is hardly revolutionary or disputed. We also know that structures are designed with reserve capacity and strategies hopefully to limit damage and not go "runaway"... that is putting all one's eggs in one basket.
I am not a forensic investigator, a fire engineer, a structural engineer, a physicists etc. The explanations about the collapse which make sense to me are not the conventional ones. My position is that the form of collapse is determined by several factors among them is the design itself. Design is not the cause of the disaster not the only factor.
If you isolate a theoretical mechanism and don't link it with any specificity to the event you will never discover how the structure and engineering played a role...or you will be able to deny that it did... and come up with simplistic explanations such as "fire" and a fuel loaded plane strike destroyed the twin towers... a statement I will not disagree with, but which does not satisfy my intellectual curiosity. NIST did present some more specificity. But I found their ideas incomplete and in some cases incorrect and based and built on assumptions (naturally).
No one will prove anything. But we also see that there have been many code recommendations as a result and building practices and standards for tall buildings seems to have evolved and not repeated some of the design and erections features of those buildings... such as off site, pre fab light weight long span floor assemblies. If this was such a brilliant effective solution for building office floors one would think a new industry would have sprung up making these assemblies.
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As for the thrust of Ozzie's comments about these two engineers being "hired guns" for a lawsuit goes. I find that incorrect with respect to Cantor and a bit of an insult to Nordenson who doesn't need the "fee" and has more ethics than simply representing something for money. The plaintiff's legal team no doubt contacted scores of engineers and asked if they had thoughts about the event and their views would support the goal of their lawsuit and happened to find several who did. Why would one of the world's top engineers risk their professional reputation and standing to support a "frivolous" lawsuit? Nordenson is just not that sort of person... and I happen to have had the privilege to work with him years ago for a brief time.
As I wrote, you don't have to agree with his view on this but it seems to be a valid one and as we know from the Challenger disaster... one person, Richard Feyman was the voice of clear thinking and reason and turned out to be correct.
"Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer".[31] He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. His guiding principle was that, if a topic could not be explained in a freshman lecture, it was not yet fully understood. Feynman gained great pleasure[32] from coming up with such a "freshman-level" explanations......"
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All disaster investigations have a quasi legal atmosphere because they attempt to gather facts... the Warren Commission, the Rogers Commission and the commission which reported on 9/11. The underlying principle is not to return an indictment, but to provide understanding about what happened for HISTORY.
