Science is at the foundation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, (NIST).
Financed by tax payers, the NIST spent over 7 years analyzing the WTC7 engineering data.
The NIST, using unequivocal language, declared that; “The heat from the uncontrolled fires caused steel floor beams and girders to thermally expand, leading to a chain of events that caused
a key structural column to fail [column 79]. The failure of this structural column then initiated a fire-induced progressive collapse of the entire building.”
Supposedly, they reached this major finding by combining science and structural data correctly.
But the NIST analysis depends on a “key” structural component failure that they believe precipitated WTC7’s global collapse.
The NIST not only claim that column 79 failed, but that it had to be the first column to fail.
The NIST describe in significant detail how they envisioned thermal expansion ultimately dislodging column 79.
Since both sides of the argument must accept that column 79 ultimately failed, the critical issue is what could have lead to such a catastrophic event.
CD is the simplest and most scientifically provable explanation.
It is also the most politically unpalatable.
ARUP analysis apparently lends support to the NIST’s thermal expansion hypothesis, but ARUP also used unrealistic temperatures localized for incredibly long periods, and as Tony has pointed out, ARUP “does not support the NIST postulation that column 79 buckled low in the building.”
When you also factor in other important NIST omissions, like girder stiffeners, the NIST failure to achieve their mandated goal becomes all the more glaring.
