Why aren't the WTC tower construction drawings publicly available?

[DGM]

To understand what I am about to say, first you have to understand that most of the columns weren't severed. Now that that is out of the way it is then a matter of the remaining columns all buckling at the same time. This would imply that the columns would fold over on each other and remain in contact. There really should not have been any freefall unimpeded impulse. The reality is that the only mechanism which could have caused the sudden onset, a higher than 1G impulse, and continuous collapse is if the columns were blown out of the way. Large columns don't just get out of the way of the upper portions in a buckling type of failure.

In your scenario, what effect did the sagging floor trusses have or did this not happen or was it a non factor?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

As others have mentioned, hearing explosions isn't the same as hearing explosives. Explosives have a peculiar sound - like a loud crack - and are unmistakable. Hearing 'explosions' usually means a thundrous crashing sound, or loud rumble - such as might be caused, say, by extremely heavy debris falling, or the sudden combustion of paint cans, cleaners, thinners, etc. as might be stored in any large office building. Firefighters hear 'explosions' in any large, excessive building fire.

As for objecting to such testing, I'm sure they wouldn't object at all, as long as someone else was footing the bill, using their own manpower and time, and didn't tamper extensively with large amounts of the debris. Of course, such tests would prove inconclusive, one way or the other - all of the chemical elements that make up explosives also exist in sizeable quantities in larger buildings. The only examinations that would prove explosives would be to sift through every ounce of the debris looking for bits of detonators, fuze cord, etc. Of course, this is a painstaking and time-consuming, tedious task, and I don't know anyone who's going to offer to do it when there's absolutely no reason to suspect explosives.

Firefighters hearing any explosions should have been cause to test for their use. The organization doing the invetigation had a responsibility to do it. It would be part of solving the crime and should have been funded. Suppose something happened to someone you cared about and there was some testimony that an explosion was heard. I really wonder if you would be so dismissive. Unfortunately, large quantities were tampered with before investigators could really do any testing. The fact that NIST only had 236 pieces of steel from the towers to do testing on shows that to be true.

I don't believe you are right about it not having a chance to be conclusive.

There were plenty of reason to suspect secondary explosives were in the towers no matter who you think planted them. There are dozens of firemen and broadcasters saying that on video. Who are you kidding?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

In your scenario, what effect did the sagging floor trusses have or did this not happen or was it a non factor?

It was a non-factor and the UL ASTM E119 fire testing done for NIST on the floor trusses only produced a few inches of midspan deflection which shows it to be a non-factor.

 

[BeAChooser]

The discussion was concerning the North Tower and Gravy's claim was that there was perimeter column bowing 7 minutes before the collapse. He hasn't been able to show it in a video and is avoiding the issue. The clip you provide shows bowing of the South Tower columns seconds before the collapse a completely separate issue.

No, you stated to him that "My contention is that the perimeter column bowing was caused by core column collapse not sagging."

So my question to you is whether you think the core columns were already collapsing 7 seconds before the outside face began to collapse downward? Because that video clip I linked to you clearly shows the outer face bowing before the perimeter began to collapse downward. And if you claim this, on what basis do you claim it? Show us your evidence.

And let's make sure everyone understands what is going on here. You aren't just saying that NIST is mistaken about the cause of the collapse. You are calling those involved in writing the portion of the report regarding bowing of the structures liars. You are calling the firemen who reported the bowing of the structure liars. Or you calling the media that reported the firemen saying that liars. Just how many evil conspirators do you have in this alternate explanation of 9/11 anyway?

 

[Gravy]

Now that that is out of the way it is then a matter of the remaining columns all buckling at the same time.

Justify this statement, Mr. mechanical engineer.

The reality is that the only mechanism which could have caused the sudden onset, a higher than 1G impulse, and continuous collapse is if the columns were blown out of the way.

You have chosen to dismiss entire NIST reports without reading them because you think they are based on faked evidence. Your opinion is laughable.

Large columns don't just get out of the way of the upper portions in a buckling type of failure.

No, they get in the way. Then they fail.

 

[DGM]

It was a non-factor and the UL ASTM E119 fire testing done for NIST on the floor trusses only produced a few inches of midspan deflection which shows it to be a non-factor.

ASTM E119 is a fire protection standard. Are you saying that they did some special test for NIST on trusses that had lost some of their fire protection? Or do you think that the fire protection was undamaged?

 

[Z]

No, it's like seeing someone shot in the stomach and bleed to death, and thinking they needed to be tested for poisons.

Having heard explosives, and having ALSO heard a large office building on fire and due to collapse, I can tell you - the difference is obvious.

The firefighters heard explosions. That's to be expected, and they certainly weren't surprised.

 

[rwguinn]

In your use of the term monolithic for the concrete pours are you saying the Boulder (Hoover) dam was poured in a continuous pour?

You obviously don't know diddly about engineering and construction, do you?
Hoover Dam
Monolithic pour

 

[Tony Szamboti]

You obviously don't know diddly about engineering and construction, do you?
Hoover Dam
Monolithic pour

The Hoover dam was a monolithic dam but was not poured monolithicly as you stated. It was poured in five foot high x 40 foot long sections, which were cured with the help of cooling pipes before another section was poured on top of it. If it hadn't been there would have been a high chance of cracking due to the exothermic heating and expansion caused by the concrete curing.

You are the one who used the term monolithic pour and that is incorrect for the Hoover dam and your link only talks about it being a monolithic dam not being poured that way.

I was only asking to see if I understood you and my post was not nasty. So what is your problem?

 

[R.Mackey]

It was a non-factor and the UL ASTM E119 fire testing done for NIST on the floor trusses only produced a few inches of midspan deflection which shows it to be a non-factor.

The UL ASTM E 119 fire testing (NIST NCSTAR1-6C) was halted before the web diagonals buckled, after which the midspan deflection would have increased enormously.

And the test articles all had intact fireproofing.

And they were subscale. Two tests matched the short-span trusses, others were half-scale tests of same. Nothing the size of the long-span trusses.

I'm seeing an awful lot of factual errors coming from you, realcddeal, so I'm going to bow out of this until you start fixing them...

 

[Tony Szamboti]

ASTM E119 is a fire protection standard. Are you saying that they did some special test for NIST on trusses that had lost some of their fire protection? Or do you think that the fire protection was undamaged?

ASTM E119 is a fire protection standard where fire is applied to the structural item under an anticipated load. The load is obviously applied to ensure the structural item can sustain it while being exposed to the fire. In the cases of the NIST testing of the 35 foot floor truss it resulted in only three inches of deflection at midspan.

I also believe NIST tested floor trusses without fireproofing as a failure in that case would have proven their theory. To say NIST did not test unfireproofed floor trusses to see if they would sag significantly flies in the face of logic and what any engineer would do to attempt to prove their theory. The "they only tested the unfireproofed trusses for calibration" isn't the whole story.

 

[jberryhill]

I ask you again: give me the name of a single firefighter who was there who claims there were explosives in the building.

Are you actually claiming that these articles don't provide names of firefighter's who said they saw, heard, or felt explosions in the towers before and during the collapse?

You said there were firefighters who saw "explosives".

You have been asked to name a single firefighter who saw "EXPLOSIVES".

Your links do not refer to a single firefighter who saw explosives.

Secondary explosions, of transformers, batteries, gas lines, steam lines, hydraulics, and all sorts of things are not at all unusual. Nobody was out on Lexington Avenue looking for explosive residue the other day because everyone who works with utilities in urban areas knows that things sometimes fail violently.

Nobody disputes that firefighters heard things go "bang" or "boom" or "pop". You are the only person who, just several posts ago, referred to firefighters having seen explosives. You have yet to provide a source for that piece of information.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

The UL ASTM E 119 fire testing (NIST NCSTAR1-6C) was halted before the web diagonals buckled, after which the midspan deflection would have increased enormously.

And the test articles all had intact fireproofing.

And they were subscale. Two tests matched the short-span trusses, others were half-scale tests of same. Nothing the size of the long-span trusses.

I'm seeing an awful lot of factual errors coming from you, realcddeal, so I'm going to bow out of this until you start fixing them...

R. Mackey, I agree and understand that the tests were done on the shorter 35 foot floor truss and there would have been more deflection on the 60 foot trusses under the same uniform loading.

However, what you are not saying is that it is the angle the deflection makes with the beam's original undeformed axis which determines the tensile load through the beam or truss which would have then been applied to the perimeter columns and the core columns on the other side. A specific angle of deflection will have a greater deflection on a longer beam but the load transmitted through it will be the same as that of the shorter beam with the same angle of deflection but a smaller deflection. For those who might not understand it is similar to a trigonometry problem.

Also, don't forget that the ASTM E119 testing was done for two hours or 120 minutes with very little sagging and the towers fell in 56 minutes and 102 minutes.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

You said there were firefighters who saw "explosives".

You have been asked to name a single firefighter who saw "EXPLOSIVES".

Your links do not refer to a single firefighter who saw explosives.

Secondary explosions, of transformers, batteries, gas lines, steam lines, hydraulics, and all sorts of things are not at all unusual. Nobody was out on Lexington Avenue looking for explosive residue the other day because everyone who works with utilities in urban areas knows that things sometimes fail violently.

Nobody disputes that firefighters heard things go "bang" or "boom" or "pop". You are the only person who, just several posts ago, referred to firefighters having seen explosives. You have yet to provide a source for that piece of information.

Oh, I see when someone says they saw low level flashes lower in the building and then it was going all the way around the building like a belt, up and down, as you would see when they demolish a building, I guess you take it that he didn't mean explosives. Whatever. Read the linked articles and decide for yourself.

 

[Gravy]

ASTM E119 is a fire protection standard where fire is applied to the structural item under an anticipated load. The load is obviously applied to ensure the structural item can sustain it while being exposed to the fire. In the cases of the NIST testing of the 35 foot floor truss it resulted in only three inches of deflection at midspan.

I also believe NIST tested floor trusses without fireproofing as a failure in that case would have proven their theory. To say NIST did not test unfireproofed floor trusses to see if they would sag significantly flies in the face of logic and what any engineer would do to attempt to prove their theory. The "they only tested the unfireproofed trusses for calibration" isn't the whole story.

What you don't know about the NIST report could fill the NIST report.


NIST: "The building designers carried out no tests on the floor system used in the WTC to establish a fire endurance rating."


Excerpt from "Fire Testing Is Questioned In Findings On Towers" New York Times, August 26, 2004:

The debate over the sufficiency of the fireproofing on the World Trade Center's lightweight floors -- essentially metal and concrete decks supported underneath by a series of inch-thick zigzagging rods -- intensified in May 2003 when federal investigators concluded that the Port Authority, back in the late 1960's, apparently never performed the formal laboratory fire test on the design.

That meant there was no way for the Port Authority to say for sure that the towers' floors would hold up against an extremely intense two-hour fire, as was required then under the New York City building code. The Port Authority, when the towers were built, said it was committed to meeting or exceeding the city code, even though as an agency created by the two states, it was not required to do so.

...It was the different results that surfaced when the longer pieces of floor – the ones that more accurately reflected floor sections used in the trade center – were tested that have provoked concerns about the legitimacy of the widely accepted furnace tests. One of the larger pieces of floor – the one that was set up to simulate the restraint applied by a real-life building – failed in a fire test.

These results left investigators with a disturbing reality: in the test in which they used the equivalent of a scale-model toy car, the results suggested that the fireproofing was sufficient. But when they used what would have been the equivalent of a real car, the fireproofing failed."

And the largest truss tested was 35 feet, with intact, newly-applied SFRM. The bowed exterior walls where the collapses initiated,

WHERE YOU CLAIM THE BOWING DIDN'T EXIST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THE PHOTO AND EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE IS FRAUDULENT,

were on sides with 60-foot trusses.


Still waiting on that firefighter's name. What seems to be the trouble?

 

[R.Mackey]

However, what you are not saying is that it is the angle the deflection makes with the beam's original undeformed axis which determines the tensile load through the beam or truss which would have then been applied to the perimeter columns and the core columns on the other side. A specific angle of deflection will have a greater deflection on a longer beam but the load transmitted through it will be the same as that of the shorter beam with the same angle of deflection but a smaller deflection. For those who might not understand it is similar to a trigonometry problem.

Doesn't change what I said. The major difference is whether you let the web diagonals buckle or not. NIST NCSTAR1-6C: Didn't let it happen. WTC Case: It happened. That's why we have pictures of floors deflecting by many feet.

Also, don't forget that the ASTM E119 testing was done for two hours or 120 minutes with very little sagging and the towers fell in 56 minutes and 102 minutes.

Did you miss or ignore when I said "intact fireproofing?" Or "test halted?" Only two of four were run the full duration. The other two were halted for fears of collapse.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

Doesn't change what I said. The major difference is whether you let the web diagonals buckle or not. NIST NCSTAR1-6C: Didn't let it happen. WTC Case: It happened. That's why we have pictures of floors deflecting by many feet.



Did you miss or ignore when I said "intact fireproofing?" Or "test halted?" Only two of four were run the full duration. The other two were halted for fears of collapse.

As an engineer if you had a theory that fire caused the collapse due to missing fireprooofing and truss sagging wouldn't you do a test without fireproofing to see if it would generate the sagging required?

Why would NIST not let the diagonals buckle if they were going to? I have heard something here about not wanting to damage the ovens. I find that hard to accept in a high profile case like this where we went to war over it and spent hundreds of billions of dollars which have also cost many lives, but can't afford to damage a few hundred thousand dollar oven to determine a root cause of the disaster that led to it all. Seems penny wise and dollar foolish to me.

Where are the pictures of floors other than those which were hit by the aircraft deflecting by many feet?

 

[R.Mackey]

It's painfully clear that you do not understand the point of those tests.

Letting the diagonals buckle in the test cell would probably have destroyed the test cell. And there aren't that many of them. Testing without fireproofing would have been pointless for their objectives, and would have been much harder to keep from collapsing.

Testing with the diagonals buckling, and without fireproofing, was done in simulation. That's the right way to do it. You use the real tests to validate the sim, and you let the sim do the dangerous tests. Destructive testing is an art all to itself, and bloody expensive.

Those pictures are in NIST NCSTAR1-3C. Read the report already. I've only commented on your errors about four times, and I'm already sick of telling you this.

 

[DGM]

I also believe NIST tested floor trusses without fireproofing as a failure in that case would have proven their theory. To say NIST did not test unfireproofed floor trusses to see if they would sag significantly flies in the face of logic and what any engineer would do to attempt to prove their theory. The "they only tested the unfireproofed trusses for calibration" isn't the whole story.

After an impact with a airliner and subsequent explosions (not bombs ) wouldn't you expect some loss of fireproofing? This sounds like NIST was trying to test real world conditions.

It's not out of the question to assume some damage to fireproofing is it?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

It's painfully clear that you do not understand the point of those tests.

Letting the diagonals buckle in the test cell would probably have destroyed the test cell. And there aren't that many of them. Testing without fireproofing would have been pointless for their objectives, and would have been much harder to keep from collapsing.

Testing with the diagonals buckling, and without fireproofing, was done in simulation. That's the right way to do it. You use the real tests to validate the sim, and you let the sim do the dangerous tests. Destructive testing is an art all to itself, and bloody expensive.

Those pictures are in NIST NCSTAR1-3C. Read the report already. I've only commented on your errors about four times, and I'm already sick of telling you this.

You seem to get sick pretty easy there fellow.

As for destructive testing being expensive that is a relative term. Don't you understand that as an engineer? How much does one of those ovens cost? How much has the Iraq war cost? I'll bet you let your wife handle the money.

It is not a hard and fast rule to let the simulation do all of the dirty work. I have designed and performed many step stress tests to actually see where failure occurs. It is a standard procedure. Let us not forget the GIGO concern with simulations.