Engineering Prof releases draft report on 9/11 collapse of WTC Bldg 7 in NYC


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  • #46858
    Silvio
    Guest

    WTC Building 7 was a 47 story skyscraper and part of the World Trade Center Complex. On 9/11/2001 at 5:20pm it collapsed to the ground in under 12 seconds. It was not hit by an aircraft like its sister buildings, the WTC twin towers 1 and 2. Professor Leroy Hulsey, head of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (and a recognized expert in forensic engineering) along with two graduate assistants recently concluded a 4 year investigation into the extraordinary collapse of this New York skyscraper.

    The official body charged with investigating and reporting on the collapse, the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), had previously issued a report stating that the collapse had been caused by office fires burning around floors 12 and 13 during the course of the day. These office fires they believed caused a structural failure starting in the North East corner of the building at column 79, floor 13, and this then started a chain reaction of further structural failures until the entire building collapsed into its own footprint.

    Since the dramatic collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11/2001, the building has been replaced with a new skyscraper constructed over the original WTC 7 footprint.

    Press Release:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Contact: Ted Walter
    (510) 292-4710
    [email protected]
    September 4, 2019
    University Study Finds Fire Did Not Cause
    3rd Tower’s Collapse on 9/11

    FAIRBANKS, Alaska – The fall of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) in New
    York City late in the afternoon of September 11, 2001, was not a result of fires, according to a
    draft report released yesterday by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF)
    following a four-year computer modeling study of the tower’s collapse.

    The UAF team’s findings contradict those of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
    (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which concluded in a 2008 report that
    WTC 7 was the first tall building ever to collapse primarily due to fire. The collapse of WTC 7
    has long been the subject of controversy, with critics of the government’s account arguing it was
    brought down in a controlled demolition.

    UAF civil engineering professor Leroy Hulsey was the study’s principal investigator. Feng Xiao,
    now an associate professor at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, and Zhili Quan,
    now a bridge engineer for the South Carolina Department of Transportation, were research
    assistants and co-authors.

    “Our study found that the fires in WTC 7 could not have caused the collapse recorded on video,”
    said Professor Hulsey. “We simulated every plausible scenario, and we found that the series of
    failures that NIST claimed triggered a progressive collapse of the entire structure could not have
    occurred. The only thing that could have brought this structure down in the manner observed on
    9/11 is the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building below Floor 17.”
    The UAF study was funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth), a nonprofit
    representing more than 3,000 architects and engineers who have signed the organization’s
    petition calling upon Congress to open a new investigation into the destruction of the three
    World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

    The release of the draft report begins a two-month period during which the public is invited to
    submit comments. The final report will be published later this year. The research team plans to
    make public by the end of September all of the data used and generated during the study, a
    decision that contrasts with NIST’s withholding of key modeling data on the grounds that
    releasing it “might jeopardize public safety.”

    For more information, visit http://ine.uaf.edu/wtc7 and https://AE911Truth.org/wtc7

    #46875
    Clark
    Guest

    I have suspected for some time that WTC7 may have been brought down by emergency demolition, proposed and executed by a small team of very dedicated and determined firefighters and their colleagues on the day of 9/11. I expect that such demolition was not officially sanctioned, and was executed covertly while the authorities pretended not to know. There are several lines of circumstantial evidence which strongly suggest this; I will enumerate them later if requested.

    I know that my opinion will be most unwelcome among those who promote the theory that the Twin Towers were pre-rigged with explosives before 9/11. I remind such Twin Tower demolition theorists that my opinion converges with that of the late Danny Jowenko, Dutch expert demolition engineer.

    I have spent many hours studying the structure of the Twin Towers, and painstakingly watching the videos of the collapses, often frame-by-frame. The claim that the collapses “broke Newton’s laws” are entirely without merit. The collapses proceeded entirely in accordance with Newton’s laws of motion (in which I am sufficiently competent); indeed, the manner of the collapses could have been predicted by application of Newton’s laws.

    Chandler’s “Downward Acceleration of WTC1” theory applies only to a contiguous block of material, not to a lattice of steel supporting thousands of tonnes of concrete in a structure that was over 90% empty space. Judy Wood’s “arguments” are based on a single misleading statement and are probably meant as a parody of Chandler’s; considering her qualifications and expertise it seems inconceivable that she intends them seriously.

    Likewise, Gage’s claim about the Twin Towers “collapsing through the line of most resistance” is also without merit. The line of most resistance was the buildings’ cores, which the video record shows to have stood the longest after collapse initiation. Next strongest were the perimeters, which took second longest to fall. The collapses proceeded fastest through the wide-span floor assemblies, occupying the space between core and perimeter and void of vertical support structure, the weakest line of descent.

    In any case, the bottom-up collapse of WTC7 tells us nothing of the top-down collapses of the Twin Towers, and the latter appear perfectly natural (under the highly exceptional circumstances) whereas the former does not.

    Having said all that, WTC7 was an absolute pig’s ear of a building; look at the engineering diagrams if you don’t believe me. It looked like it had been cobbled together out of left-over parts, it was built on caissons laid years previously intended for a building of less than half the height and less than a third of the weight, and it had an elaborate truss arrangement to straddle a pre-existing electricity sub-station. Whoever brought this down at such short notice and so relatively symmetrically has my deep respect.
    – – – – – – – – –

    Promoters of Twin Tower demolition theory are promoting entirely the wrong message about the collapses. The Twin Towers were disasters waiting to happen, as many suspected at the time of their construction. Their sprinkler systems were inadequate to control any fire greater than one quarter of one floor, and their evacuation facilities were criminally inadequate; some steel components had fire protection rated at only 90 minutes, whereas full evacuation was known to require over three hours – tens of thousands of people would need to escape via just three tiny staircases.

    The real message of the Twin Tower collapses is that the commercial system cares not a jot about people’s lives or safety, and builds fragile structures prone to catastrophic, runaway failure. This message has indeed been buried by the corporate media; the US and indeed global economy would itself collapse if staff realised and refused to work in such arrogantly ambitious phallic symbols.

    #46883
    Silvio
    Guest

    Here is a link to view the video presentation by Professor Hulsey on the release of his draft report examining the WTC 7 collapse. The talk took place at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on the evening of Sep 3rd. Professor Hulsey is scheduled to give a similar presentation this evening, Sep 5th, at the University of California Berkeley. However, so far there has been no mention of this latest presentation also being live streamed.

    Be aware that the audio is extremely poor for the first few minutes while a presenter makes some introductory remarks about Professor Hulsey to the audience. However, once Professor Hulsey takes the mic and starts his presentation, the audio quality improves significantly to a more normal, clear quality. It would be best to maximize the video size to better view the slides and video clips used as part of the presentation. The video runs 1hr 12min in length.

    Link to Professor Hulsey’s Presentation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Sep 3rd 2019.

    https://media.uaf.edu/media/t/0_xf8c7khp

    #46887
    ZigZag Wanderer
    Guest

    “and builds fragile structures prone to catastrophic, runaway failure.” … If the standard of steel high rise is so fragile and prone to catastrophic runaway failure why has there been not a single example of such failure anywhere , ever?

    These fragile structures you mention seem to be remarkably robust.

    #46892
    Clark
    Guest

    “why has there been not a single example of such failure anywhere , ever?”

    Actually, numerous steel structures have collapsed; Crystal Palace springs to mind. The Twin Tower collapses were highly unusual, but so was the extent of the initiating damage and fire.

    “These fragile structures you mention seem to be remarkably robust”

    Actually, the Twin Towers had about one third of the overall density of skyscrapers built in the 1930s, such as the Empire State building. Such earlier buildings also had internal support more evenly distributed, whereas the Twin Towers incorporated 22 metre floor spans for “open plan” office design. It was these stacked floor structures that underwent catastrophic runaway destruction. But we all know that things were built more solidly in the ’30s than the ’70s; just think of your old Ford Cortina.

    The Twin Towers were built within the jurisdiction of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and as such were not subject to the usual building regulations; that design would not have been permitted elsewhere. Some engineers such as Charlie Thornton were horrified by the design.

    #46896
    Clark
    Guest

    Here’s veteran skyscraper engineer Charlie Thornton:

    At 02:15 –

    “The people who designed it and the Port Authority, in their public relations and publicity, said what you just said,” [that the buildings were very strong] “but in fact, in plain English, the buildings were a piece of shit.”

    And here’s an excerpt from the professional journal Fire Engineering, archived at globalresearch.ca:

    https://archives.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAN309A.html

    “The builders and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building codes, has denied charges that the buildings’ fire protection or construction components were substandard but has refused to cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions”

    #46898
    Clark
    Guest

    The problem with Professor Hulsey’s investigation is that nearly all the building debris was disposed of years before either his investigation or the NIST investigation even began. It will never be possible to know if all the specified components were actually fitted, or whether substandard parts were substituted. Maybe he and his highly respectable team have been able to address some of this, but it seems unlikely that much can be proved conclusively.

    WTC7 stood for many hours beyond its fire rating, everyone was evacuated and so no one was hurt or killed in the collapse. Consequently, investigation was of a much lower priority than the Twin Towers. In fact its collapse was a godsend to the fire-fighters, who wished to search for their comrades trapped in the wreckage of the Twin Towers.

    #46902
    Gerry
    Guest

    WTC 7 couldn’t have been rigged in a few hours.

    I have also studied the towers structural details. I obtained the drawings this year, so i would be surprised if you’d seen them.

    I headed up the research group who began uncovering these details in WTC7 from analysis of the structural drawings and comparison to NIST’s report, when we got the drawings 7 or 8 years ago.

    This study from Alaska corrects stiffener plate omissions, shear stud omissions, plate dimension errors, artificial pinning of the perimeter columns, omission of lateral support beams, and exaggeration of thermalexpansion in the steels.

    You have to ask yourself when NIST claim that a 53ft beam can expand over 6.25″ over 577C. Not gonna happen. Ever.

    Every error and omission that NISt made was in favour of their chosen hypothesis. EVERY single one made failure at column 79 look a little more likely.

    We are about a year into analysing the Tower drawings now, and I can say that NIST’s model for those is even worse than their attempt at WTC7.

    We will see a similar study to this for the towers before too long. You should maybe take a proper look at the structure and try to be on the right side of that debate when it comes.

    Here’s the tower drawings – if you’re into your engineering you’ll love them. There’s about 15,000. Bring me any SE who claims it was fire and I will take you and him through the drawings for any one of these buildings and explain the reality to you.
    https://archive.org/details/fav-gerrycan

    #46903
    Gerry
    Guest

    Here is the SAME ENGINEER

    What does Mr Thornton say about the towers and an aircraft ?

    “wouldn’t do anything to the main building”

    “as for knocking it over, would not happen”

    Then after 911 when he gets a US govt contract – “the buildings were shit”. Yeah Right Charlie.

    #46908
    Gerry
    Guest

    You failed to mention that Mr Thornton’s business partner was the guy who ultimately signed to allow the steel (EVIDENCE) to be removed and shipped off.

    We could have known from directional shear stud damage for example, exactly what had moved where, in order to initiate the collapses.

    Why do you think the US govt allowed and facilitated the destruction of evidence, using people they would then award major contracts to?

    How do you see Mr Thornton’s change of heart re the towers now? I hear numbers that I understand when he is explaining how resilient they are. I know they’re 16 times stiffer than a conventional high rise.

    I don’t hear him explaining anything about them structurally to justify his comments. He could not lace John Skilling’s boots.

    #46909
    Clark
    Guest

    I do not defend NIST’s analysis of WTC7’s collapse, though I feel that I must point out that your “correct[ion of] stiffener plate omissions, shear stud omissions, […], omission of lateral support beams]” cannot be verified because the building debris is no longer available.

    Civilian controlled demolition indeed takes ages to rig, because adjacent structures must not be damaged. Under conditions where adjacent damage is not a concern, military engineers have certainly brought down buildings very rapidly on many occasions. This is what I suspect happened under the emergency conditions of 9/11. It is what fire-fighters said would happen, what John Kerry though had happened, what Larry Silverstein seemed to suggest had happened, and what, according to one report (ABC I think) he was trying to arrange.

    I do not deal with collapse initiation of the Twin Towers; it is beyond my abilities, and I am aware of NIST’s failure to simulate collapse initiation. If explosives or incendiaries were used to aid initiation of either collapse they must have been applied at the damaged zones, and that pretty much rules out their being present before the aircraft impacts.

    Estimating the rate of the collapses of the Twin Towers after collapse initiation is well within my abilities with Newtons laws and the momentum equations derived from them, because the margins are so huge that detailed consideration of the structure is entirely unnecessary. A mere glance of the relatively tiny truss seats is sufficient to state that they stood no chance of arresting the descent of ten or eleven floor assemblies, let alone their contents, the vertical frame members, hat truss and service floor contents etc. Likewise, momentum considerations are unequivocal; the internal destruction of floor assemblies was bound to accelerate smartly, leaving the laterally unbraced perimeter to fall outward, which it did, breaking into sections as would be expected. Chandler’s “Downward Acceleration of WTC1” is clearly without merit and I am disappointed (though not surprised) that you didn’t denounce it.

    #46910
    Clark
    Guest

    Listen to the whole section; here’s a longer excerpt:

    Thornton was clearly comparing wind load with the relatively minor impact of an aircraft. He said that an aircraft couldn’t knock the building over, and indeed, the 9/11 impacts did not.

    You quoted selectively, leaving out the following:

    “it could affect localised structural elements, it could knock out a column, it could be some damage”

    Yes, in 1988, when the video was made, Thornton is being loyal to his profession, playing down the likely effects of an aircraft impact, and not being rude about another professional’s work. He’d expect the same in return, of course, and Skilling would be unlikely to call Thornton’s designs “overweight, heavy constructions with masses of unnecessary stone and concrete”.

    #46912
    Clark
    Guest

    “WTC 7 couldn’t have been rigged in a few hours.”

    Hang on, what exactly are you suggesting here? It was fire-fighters who were saying that WTC7 “might be brought down”, and “move back; that building is about to blow up”. Are you saying that someone secretly rigged WTC7 for demolition pre-9/11, and then, after nearly 300 fire-fighters had been killed while attempting to rescue people from WTCs 2 and 1, they let the surviving brothers in on the secret that they’d had WTC7 rigged for weeks and were about to detonate it? And the fire-fighters didn’t immediately turn round and murder these explosive-rigging maniacs?

    That doesn’t sound like a plausible scenario to me.

    #46914
    Clark
    Guest

    I didn’t mention Thornton’s business partner because I didn’t know, but I’m not particularly surprised; there can’t be very many players in the hi-rise design game. Likewise with the awards of contracts; the US government wanted the whole matter of building collapses played down as quickly as possible, while they moved swiftly to their favourite pass-time of attacking defenceless countries.

    I explain Thornton’s change of heart by the building collapses that had just killed three thousand people. Along side the fact that it had probably made him angry it was also terribly bad for business; much better to pin it on a “bad apple” than to let it taint the whole industry.

    #46915
    Clark
    Guest

    “Civilian controlled demolition indeed takes ages to rig, because adjacent structures must not be damaged”

    It also pads out the contract, saves on staff and bolsters the fee, of course. It’s not like you get many jobs per day in that game, is it?

    #46917
    Clark
    Guest

    “WTC 7 couldn’t have been rigged in a few hours.”

    The sort of pre-rigging you’re suggesting is also implausible for another, more mundane reason. Pre-rigging for a typical civilian controlled demolition involves pre-weakening structural members with disc cutters, and boring holes ready to take explosive charges. If I’d have worked in WTC7 I think I’d have been pretty suspicious if gashes and holes had started accumulating all over the building, especially if the building had suddenly collapsed subsequently, so unless you know of such reports from staff I think we should conclude that any such work was done after WTC7 was evacuated on 9/11.

    Don’t get so focussed on structural engineering that you lose sight of the bigger picture.

    #46918
    Gerry
    Guest

    Okay then, one issue at a time.

    First. Stiffener plates omitted – FROM THEIR MODEL – of course they were installed in the actual building – I thought you said you had studied this stuff.

    Here’s a video I made about the omission of the stiffener plates by NIST in their analysis reuploaded 6 years ago.

    #46919
    Gerry
    Guest

    And there you go blaming the truss seats. The concrete and pan with rebar above the trusses was stronger than them and sagging trusses in the towers do not have the ability to pull the perimeter columns in as observed. In the transverse areas of the towers the long span floor truss system was not connected to the core, but to the short span transfer truss.

    This indicates that for the perimeter coolumns to be pulled in on the South face of the Borth tower some 5 – 10 minutes before initiation would require a failure within the core area, thus causing the perimeters to be pulled in. In NIST’s tower analysis the added an imaginary 5kip lateral force to the perimeter column to get them to bend in as observed, for the very reason that the sagging trusses could not do it.

    They also omitted bridging trusses in all the one way zones throughout their full tower model along with anchor straps and shear studs along with other reinforcement.

    You can observe that the antenna of the north tower tilts before the roofline moves at initiation, confirming a failure initiating event initially confined to the core, not yet having transmitted through the outrigger truss above floor 107 that held the antenna support steels.

    The North tower collapsed in about 13.8s total which equates to around 2/3 freefall, total freefall being approcx 9.2s for 1365ft. Still way too fast.

    Maybe you should go get that SE to help you out a bit here.

    #46920
    Gerry
    Guest

    You could use an incendiary to do any pre weakening that couldn’t be accessed for WTC7

    You can get to almost all 47 cores of either tower at all levels from the elevator shafts.

    Didn’t they have the “largest elevator upgrade in history” in the WTc in the year before the attack ?

    #46921
    Gerry
    Guest

    The boring holes bit doesn’t apply so much to steel frames. 45 degree cut charges to make the core step off itself doesnt need holes drilling.

    #46922
    Gerry
    Guest

    WOAH – I have just realised what you are actually saying.

    just to be clear- you are saying that WTC7 was rigged ON THE DAY of 911 ?

    When Danny Jowenko made the comment about “they must have worked hard” he was being sarcastic/ You clearly have no comprehension whatsoever of what it takes to get a steel frame to come straight down, evenly like that.

    You don’t look at that sort of structure and CD it a few hours later the same day.

    #46923
    Gerry
    Guest

    “A mere glance of the relatively tiny truss seats is sufficient to state that they stood no chance of arresting the descent of ten or eleven floor assemblies, let alone their contents”

    That sounds great until you take into account the fact that the floor system in the twin towers did not take any of gravity load of the building. It supported and it’s own weight. It’s job structurally was to transfer lateral loads redistributing overstress.

    You said you’d studied this stuff. Trying to tell me about the structurak details for towers that you have NEVER seen the structural drawings for until tonight. And here you are getting the basics of a framed tube design wrong. Structural 101.

    You should probably go get that SE now….. It would make for a more enlightening exchange.

    #46924
    Gerry
    Guest

    this is an engineer talking about the WTC. Sitting in the WTC. Because he is an engineer employed to maintain and oversee the WTC.

    Is he wrong too ?

    Was John Skilling, the lead structural engineer who designed the towers wrong with his analysis ? (and it did account for jet fuel btw)

    #46926
    Gerry
    Guest

    “Chandler’s “Downward Acceleration of WTC1” theory applies only to a contiguous block of material, not to a lattice of steel supporting thousands of tonnes of concrete in a structure that was over 90% empty space. Judy Wood’s “arguments” are based on a single misleading statement and are probably meant as a parody of Chandler’s; considering her qualifications and expertise it seems inconceivable that she intends them seriously.”

    With your permission, I could ask David to come on and respond to you here personally ? Not saying he will, but I could ask him.
    You’ll get shorter shrift from him than me though, mentioning Judy in the same paragraph as him. Remember, he is the guy who got NISt to admit that WTC7 fell at a rate of freefall for 2.25s.

    Will probably take him about that long to destroy your attempt at smearing his research.

    #46942
    Clark
    Guest

    I’m not smearing Chandler’s research; he did very well measuring the descent rate of WTC7. Incidentally I take his measurements more seriously than he does himself – he gets a nice smooth velocity curve, and that indicates accuracy, so I’m prepared to accept that the WTC7 roofline’s acceleration briefly exceeded g.

    The implication of that is that the roofline is less than indicative of the behaviour of the entire system. Much confusion has been generated, both by over-simplification and over-complication, eg. “g” and “free-fall” have been used interchangeably, but g is a rate of acceleration whereas free-fall is a physical condition. A thing can accelerate at g without being in free-fall, and none of the observable system elements were in free-fall, because they being affected by elements we can’t see.

    Yes, I’d like a chat with Chandler; please do ask him to join us. Can we keep Gage from getting involved please? He seems angry and unpleasant, and I doubt I could remain in conversation. I have heard that David Chandler is a Quaker; do you know if that is so? I attend Chelmsford Meeting of the friends, but I am not myself a member.

    #46943
    Clark
    Guest

    The stiffener plates are relevant to WTC7. I have no desire to defend NIST’s analysis of WTC7’s collapse.

    #46944
    Clark
    Guest

    Yes, I’m saying that an emergency demolition was performed on WTC7, on the day of 9/11.

    I stress emergency, not “controlled”. A civilian demolition is “controlled” in the sense that the company guarantees to limit the adjacent damage, and will pay compensation should damage exceed those limits. None of this applied post-collapse of WTCs 1 and 2; saving lives became the priority. The fire-fighters were on the verge of mutiny, prevented from searching for their lost comrades in the WTC7 exclusion zone.

    Military engineers have repeatedly brought down structures in a matter of hours, behind enemy lines. Similar to 9/11, adjacent damage is not going to spark compensation claims and “control” is not the primary objective. It is true that WTC7 came down pretty symmetrically. Considerable asymmetry in fact occurred, but it was only clear from one of the camera angles, and all the more commonly seen shots make the fall look more symmetrical than it was. The fall also damaged two adjacent buildings; though most of the debris did end up in the building’s footprint, it would have been considered an expensive failure as a controlled demolition.

    I think the remarkable symmetry of collapse was a combination of skill, luck, and WTC7’s unusual truss arrangement straddling a pre-existing electricity transformer substation; the “bridge” upon which the core was constructed acted as a convenient way of dropping the core.

    #46945
    Clark
    Guest

    I have no interest in defending NIST’s collapse initiation scenario. That perimeter walls bowed in is a matter of photographic and video record, but then so is the early descent of WTC1’s antenna, indicating core failure.

    #46946
    Clark
    Guest

    …though I wouldn’t have used the term “confined to”. Damage on 9/11 was anything but confined.

    #46947
    Clark
    Guest

    “the floor system in the twin towers did not take any of gravity load of the building”

    Precisely. The floor systems were never intended to take the weight of the structure above – someone needs to ram this home to people like Gage.

    Of course when the vertical columns got out of line at collapse initiation, a floor system or two is precisely what would be the next line of defence against collapse. No chance.

    #46949
    Clark
    Guest

    “The North tower collapsed in about 13.8s total which equates to around 2/3 freefall, total freefall being approcx 9.2s for 1365ft. Still way too fast.”

    Yes, the internal collapse accelerated at around 2/3 of g, so 1/3 of the entire potential energy of the structure (before collapse) was available for destruction of materials.

    Convert that to TNT equivalent and you can see that it was way more than enough.

    #46950
    Clark
    Guest

    “the internal collapse accelerated at around 2/3 of g…”

    That’s Chandler’s very good work too; he has a video on YouTube, a shot of WTC1’s collapse from afar, with superimposed descending bars indicating free-fall and the actual progression of the internal collapse front.

    #46952
    Clark
    Guest

    No, he isn’t wrong. The aircraft did indeed puncture the “screen netting” (a fact that many Truthers declare impossible, and get away with) and the buildings indeed continued to stand.

    Do we know that the buildings hadn’t become overloaded and weakened in use? Floor assemblies had been breached to install entire escalator systems. Massive lead-acid battery backup rooms had been installed. By 2001 nearly every desk probably held an old-fashioned glass CRT computer monitor, unanticipated when the buildings were designed.

    #46953
    Clark
    Guest

    I thought the “largest elevator upgrade in history” was WTCs 1 and 2, not 7, but do check if you wish.

    Explosives in WTCs 1 and 2’s cores do not help us explain those collapses, because the video record shows that those cores fell only after the floor stacks had torn themselves to pieces and the perimeters had toppled outwards.

    #46956
    Clark
    Guest

    Gerry, I’d like to thank you for having kept the discussion reasonably well-focussed upon engineering and physics. I have had many very unpleasant exchanges with “9/11 Truthers” who leap about diverse points eg. as if lack of effective airport security had some relevance to building collapse rates etc., and they have insisted upon insinuating that I’m some sort of pro-war secret agent, repeatedly sniggering amongst themselves.

    I am no such thing; I’m an anti-war activist since 2003 and now a member of Extinction Rebellion; I spent ten days last April camping on the Marble Arch traffic island, and for many years I was a volunteer helping Craig with this website. It gets really depressing when some self-appointed gang quip among themselves about how I must exult in the murder of innocents, just because I know when Newton’s laws haven’t actually been broken.

    #46958
    Clark
    Guest

    …and when I praise Chandler’s work I am not being sarcastic; sarcastic voice tones don’t survive transcription to text, so I’m not using sarcasm, I’m trying to write as straight as I can. If I find myself lapsing on that rule I hope to apologise and clarify.

    Chandler has done painstaking observation and measurement of the video record. His “Smoking Guns” videos are simply misinterpretation – the objects that fly apart in mid-air are spinning, and fly apart due to conservation of angular momentum. The objects that suddenly change direction seem to have been struck by other falling debris; you can even make out some of the impinging objects.

    The whole matter of the Twin Tower collapses has become highly polarised and contentious with nearly all participants taking one side or the other and accusing their opposite numbers of ill intent; an entirely inappropriate environment for detached and rational analysis. Let’s try to work together to correct that as best we can.

    #46972
    Silvio
    Guest

    Peter Ketcham, a former National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) employee, explains in the video linked below that he had always been very proud of working for NIST (as a computer scientist/mathematician) and believed at one time that NIST had an established reputation for doing “research of the highest integrity”. He was employed by NIST at the time the investigation into the WTC collapses was ongoing, but was not involved in that research himself.

    He describes in the video how he became very disillusioned with his former employer when it was drawn to his attention that NIST had apparently made some quite egregious errors in the investigations into the WTC collapses. For one example that springs to mind, he found that NIST was quite clearly misleading the public when they boldly insisted computer modeling of their proposed WTC7 collapse initiation and the following couple of seconds closely matched what was seen in the actual videos of the event when it clearly did not.

    Furthermore, he questions NIST apparent obsession with only identifying an initiating event or failure that could possibly start a collapse process but then ignoring any investigation into the subsequent behaviour of the falling structures, as if that was entirely inconsequential to producing a well rounded and comprehensive report of the three most significant structural failures in history.

    Stand for the Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out | 9/11 Evidence and NIST

    #46977
    Rhys Jaggar
    Guest

    Is not the point of using namothermite that it will cut the steel for you, obviating the need for disc cutters?

    #46979
    Rhys Jaggar
    Guest

    1. Controlled demolition does not break Newton’s laws. It allows building collapse to proceed within normal laws of physics.
    2. Dozens and dozens of first responders reported contemporaneously a series of loud bangs indicative to them of explosions at WTCs 1 and 2. Do you immediately rebut their testimony as wilfully inaccurate?
    3. Expert demolitions professionals conclude that WTC7 collapse was entirely consistent with controlled demolition. Do you regard those specialists as lying incompetents?

    I will not get into the scientific rigour of Extinction Rebellion, but suffice it say that you have a job on your hands to convince me that you are scientifically rigorous.

    FYI, MI5 et al put me under surveillance for strong opposition to Iraq war amongst other things. It was very intrusive surveillance. I have never worked for an arms manufacturer, in the oil industry nor have I ever supported Likud, Verwoerd et al or US imperialism.

    #46982
    Clark
    Guest

    1) After collapse initiation, the collapses of the Twin Towers as recorded on many videos proceeded within the normal laws of physics, without any need for assistance by explosives.

    Indeed, explosives would have noticeably disturbed the natural motion and destruction. Further, observation of the wreckage shows that the perimeter broke into sections by breakage of the bolts at the box section ends, not by melting or explosion. Dust was produced predominantly in the final crush of the internal collapse hitting ground, not evenly throughout collapse as the proposed sequenced detonations would have done.

    2) I regard that testimony as reasonably accurate – after any incident, testimony of different witnesses shows considerable variation. But nearly all such reports concern loud bangs before and up to the time of collapse initiation. There are not widespread reports of percussions in a timed, accelerating sequence during collapse progression.

    3) You seem not to have read what I have written; I wrote that I agree with the late Danny Jowenko, the Dutch demolition expert. I suspect that WTC7 may have been subjected to emergency demolition, decided upon and executed shortly after the collapses of the Twin Towers, so that the fire-fighters could continue rescue operations in the WTC7 exclusion zone.

    My disagreement is one only of semantics; this could not be called a controlled demolition, because the word “controlled” in the term “controlled demolition” refers to guarantees of limiting the extent of adjacent damage. This would have been neither reasonable nor possible in the chaotic environment of 9/11; just for starters, WTC7 was on fire.

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