Weaponized drywall

[leftysergeant]

It occurred to me while I was following a link that gumboot provided to a site dealing with ballistics that parts of the WTC towers could have been turned against themselves.

The towers were unique in having their cores enclosed not in concrete, but in very heavy drywall. This may have played a roile in their destruction.

It seems that when a shotgun blast is fired into drywall, it behaves differently than a solid bullet. When fired through several boards, there is more damage done to the third or fouth board than to the first. This is because, apparently, the mass of shot picks up more material without losing too great a part of its energy, and imparts that energy over a greater area of the target.

Once it had penetrated a little bit into the buildings, each aircraft behaved, for all intents and purposes, more like a shotgun blast than like a bullet.

Would it, then, not have also accelerated parts of the wallboard enclosures sufficiently to give them the kinetic energy to do further damage in the cores?

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot3.htm

 

[uk_dave]

Drywall (or plasterboard) is not a 'unique' method of fireproofing
http://www.british-gypsum.com/literature/white_book/steelwork_encasement_systems.aspx

As for the drywall itself doing damage to the structural steelwork....... I very much doubt it

 

[Max Photon]

Throw The Book at him

Plus, it a sacrilegious of you to doubt that FEA picks up such effects.

(I mean dude, come on. They used computers!)

 

[TheRedWorm]

Computers are a helluva lot better than arguments from incredulity, don't you think?

 

[Tweeter]

Plus, it a sacrilegious of you to doubt that FEA picks up such effects.

(I mean dude, come on. They used computers!)

yahtzee!
http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm

 

[leftysergeant]

I am actually sugggesting that this may have contributed to both the damage to the columns and to the stripping of the insulation. The shotgun test on the insulation may have been only partly right in that there was a lot more frag passing through the impacted area than just the aircraft and the office furniture.