Saturday, February 23, 2008

hOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE HEARING CONFIRMS THAT NO PROTECTED STEEL FRAMED BUILDING HAD EVER COLLAPSED FROM FROM FIRE ALONE

FRAMED BUILDING HAD Since I published my article, TOO MANY SUSPICIOUS ANOMALIES ABOUT 9/11, on the Atheists For Human Rights meetup, I have become involved in a running debate with someone with the user name of Tom of Darwin. One of my replies to him is published below. It provided additional support to the points I made in TOO MANY ...

Tom:
Flight AA77, which struck the Pentagon, made a 170 degree turn while simultaneously descending 7000 feet to send up flying only a few feet above the lawn as it flew into the Pentagon. Not only would a pilot with only a few hours of training on a simulator have been unable to perform this maneuver but even military top gun pilots say they would be unable to perform this maneuver. In fact, skilled pilots have said no civilian aircraft would have been able to do this.
Two of the experts who testified before the House Committee On Science May 1, 2002 Hearing On the Collapse of the World Trade Center, experts whose testimony I read in the document you sent me, said the there had NEVER BEFORE been a collapse of a protected,
steel framed building because of fire. Dr. W. Gene Corley, American Society of Civil Engineers and Chair of the Building Performance Assesment Team reviewing the WTC disaster said on page 76 of the hearing record that "prior to these events, no protected steel frame structure, the most common form of large commercial construction in the United States, has ever experienced a fire-induced collapse." Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology said on page 103, "The Twin Towers and WTC 7 are the only known cases of total structural collapse where fire played a significant role." So we have here an admission by a spokesperson for NIST that allegedly accounted for the collapses that fire had never before brought about such a collapse of a protected, steel framed building. And Dr. Jonathan Barnett, Professor of Fire Safety Studies at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute said of page 133, "Up until 9/11, we never had a collapse of a protected steel building." On page 163 he said, "This was the first time we had the collapse of a protected steel structure." Dr. Bement said on page 169, "...there have been instances where buildings have had major fires that have burned to completion without the buildings collapsing." And on page 172, Dr. Barnett said of the partial collapse of WTC 5, "But building 5 was a normal building and it had a fire and it had a major collapse. This has never happened before."
I subscribe to SCIENCE NEWS and the August 25, 2007 had an article about the collapse of the World Trade Center on pages 122 - 24 entitled FIRE INSIDE: STRUCTURAL DESIGN WITH FIRE SAFETY IN MIND by Carolyn Berry. The paragraph in the first column on page 124 is
particularly significant in evaluating the NIST computer simulation of the collapse of WTC 7:"The NIST simulation, like all models of building failures to date, couldn't follow the 9/11 collapses through to the end. No computer is yet powerful enough to follow the chaotic sequence of events that ensues when components break apart and a
building falls, but this is where research is headed."
In other words, the much vaunted NIST simulation which purported to dispose of the arguments of we conspiracy theorists didn't actually demonstrate how fire caused the
buildings to collapse; they just waved their hands when the computingpower currently available had took them as far as it could and said: "This is far enough; the buildings collapsed somewhere about here." Of course we all know we have accounted for how the buildings probably collapsed once we have gone this far. It HAS to be the probable explanation because the only alternative explanation is those NUTTY, WACKO CONSPIRACY THEORIES! We know a priori that that CAN'T be true!
I might as well add the statement of Allen Hay, chief fire safety officer of the New York City Fire Department, about WTC 7. "We just expected it to burn out -- we didn't expect it to fall down." "It's the only building I know in New York City to ever collapse (strictly) from fire."
But I want to return to the repeated Congressional testimony that a protected, steel framed building have NEVER BEFORE collapsed because of fire. And never afterwards either. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we have a purported fact about the behavior of protected,
steel framed buildings in fire that dare not be true again!
You say that 9/11 was the first time a protected, steel framed building had had an airplane crash into it and knock the asbestos insulation off its steel girders. Actually smaller planes have struck skyscrapers. It happened to the Empire State Building in 1929
and 1942. But this may well be the first time a 757 has crashed into a skyscraper.
However protected, steel framed buildings have caught fire in earthquakes (I remember seeing a movie about the Los Angeles earthquake of 1906 watching high rise buildings burn.) and
earthquakes can shake asbestos insulation loose better than a 757 can. The effect of a 757 on a building is minuscule compared to the effect of an earthquake. But we know that if the buildings weren't toppled by the earthquakes, the fires never caused them to collapse. We know this because of the repeated and reiterated testimony before the Congressional Committee that NO protected, steel framed building prior to 9/11 had EVER collapsed solely because of fire. Once again, NIST has given us an assertion about the behavior of steel framed buildings in fire that dare not ever be true again!
I have not yet had the time to check all the claims in the extensive material you emailed me. But as for the claim that the molten metal at the bottom of the wreckage of the World Trade Center could have been molten aluminum, molten aluminum has a silvery
color. The molten metal that spilled down the sides of the World Trade Center had a bright yellow color, indicative of molten steel at a much higher temperature. Some portions of it glowed white hot because of an even higher temperature.
You are no doubt aware of the pressure the Bush Administration put on officials to report the results they wanted to hear. Generals in Iraq kept being replaced until they not only reported that they could be successful but sucessful with the number of troops the Bush Administration allocated. The Bush Admistration kept demanding intelligence that there were weapons of mass desruction in Iraq until they got it. So it is not surprising that those federal employees in NIST produced the results Bush wanted. Nist is part of the Department of Commerce whose head is a member of Bush's cabinet. Philip Zelikow, who ran the 9/11 Commission hearings was a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and as such part of Bush's inner circle. So when you juxtapose the enormous number of experts cited in the NIST report against the few I cite, you are not citing a vast number of independent experts but a vast number of federal employees whose livelihood depended on remaining in the good graces of an administration known for not demanding the facts but the assertions of facts they wanted.
Finally, a number of people have rejected the controlled demolition theory of 9/11 on the grounds that there is no way they could have planted all the explosives without being caught. But the crucial consideration is that there is no way the World Trade Center
buildings could have collapsed on their footprint without being brought down by a controlled demolition. That is the only way of bringing buildings down without either demolishing it brick by brick and girder by girder or knocking them all over their surroundings. Since we know the buildings were brought down by controlled demolitions, our task is to figure out how they planted the explosives without being caught instead of arguing that they couldn't have brought the building down by controlled demolition because they couldn't have preplanted the explosives without being caught.
An analogy might be a person in the 1940's who believed it was impossible to make an atomic bomb. If that person had been in Hiroshima on July 6, 1945, they would have known it was possible to construct an atomic bomb even if they still didn't know how to do it
themself.
Robert Halfhill


http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com (SITE NOW BANNED ON AOL)
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1 Comments:

Blogger Arthur Scheuerman said...

This is from my book "Fire ih the Skyscraper" By Arthur Scheuerman

Reports of Controlled Demolition, Bombs, Thermite, Electromagnetic Rays, etc..

Many people interpreted the loud sounds and debris being projected out sideways during the Tower collapses as an indication that explosives were used to demolish the buildings. Most of these ‘explosive’ sounds, heard during the collapses were heard after the collapses began. The exterior walls can be seen bending and buckling inward in the videos of both Towers long before any sounds or ground vibrations occurred. In Tower 2, the exterior columns in the east wall were photographed bowing inward up to 10 inches, 18 minutes after the plane’s impact. That’s 38 minutes before the global collapse began. To be technical, you could say that Tower 2’s collapse began slowly, with possibly some noise or impact sounds from falling floors, about 38 minutes earlier than the official collapse time. The explosive sounds and expanding dust clouds occurred just after the east wall buckled inward and started the collapse, and not before the buckling, as would have happened with controlled demolition.

When the south wall of Tower 1 was photographed it was bowing inward up to 55 inches on floors 95 to 101, about six minutes before these columns were seen buckling inward. In the North Tower “thunder” sounds were heard when floors collapsed on the south side 12 to 14 seconds before the top of the building was seen to tilt southward and begin falling as a unit starting the global collapse. Since each section of floor on the long-span side weighed about 500 tons, I would explore these ‘explosive’ sounds in Tower 1 as evidence of a floor or floors detaching and impacting the floors below on the south side which most probably accelerated south wall failure. I believe all the supposed ‘explosive’ sounds can be explained by the impacts made by the collapsing buildings after the columns were pulled in and buckled by the bowing and sagging floors and when the floors themselves began impacting the floors below. The boom, boom, boom, boom, boom repetitive ‘explosive’ sounds reported by firefighters running as Tower 2 was coming down were most likely caused by the sequential collision of impacting floors (pan caking). The great quantity of air on each floor being compressed in a fraction of a second by great weight and momentum would propel air, smoke, and any concrete dust and debris outward at great velocity.
It is clear from the computer studies that the heat from the fires caused differential expansion of the steel parts in the long span, floor trusses with the resulting thermal bowing in some floors directly exerting pull-in forces on the exterior columns or this thermal bowing could have detached a floor which would have impacted the floor below destroying composite action by separating the concrete slab from the trusses and inducing strong tensile (suspension) forces in the double weighted floor. In other floors thermal expansion of the floor against the columns compressed the trusses which along with shear forces within the trusses buckled the diagonal struts collapsing the trusses which went into suspension (catenary action) and helped pull-in and eventually buckle the exterior column walls. All these adverse floor truss effects were caused by steel expansion which begins immediately as the steel is heated. Bowing and buckling can happen at low temperatures (400 C to 600 C) even before the steel would have weakened excessively from higher temperatures. Once the exterior column buckling spread,- possibly assisted by the spandrels,- along an entire wall on one face the towers began to tilt and the buckling spread around the towers exterior and into the core and with all the columns buckled the leaning top sections of the tower began to fall straight down. Although the North tower antenna appeared from some northern angles to have fallen straight down it actually tilted to the south because the south wall buckled first and the cantilevered top building section pulled the core over to the south.

The South Tower’s top tilted to the east because its east wall buckled first. Once the core columns got out of plumb, there would have been little resistance to their buckling at the weak splices. With the incredible weight of the top of the buildings gaining momentum, like a heavy wedge or sledge all it had to do was break the welded, and single bolt connections holding the floors to the columns. This coupled with the fact that the falling top sections momentum increases as the square of the number of floors impacted as the floors were detached and added to the weight of the descending top. There would have been little resistance to slow the top section’s acceleration to the ground. Because this acceleration due to gravity increased the speed and momentum of the collapsing floors and building top, the impacts would have been increasingly violent as shown on the seismic graphs increasing amplitude until maximum when the mass of accumulated floors hit bedrock seven stories into the cellar.

In order for a column to support the loads they have to be plumb and in line with the columns above and below. If they get out of plumb by 10 to 20 degrees they buckle and can no longer support the weight. The buildings collapsed because the floors first buckled from restrained thermal expansion and thermal bowing affecting floor truss stability. The sagging floor trusses pulled in the 59 columns in one exterior wall and they eventually buckled. Once the buildings started to tip over from loss of column support on one side the tremendous excess eccentric weight began buckling all the columns across the building. Once the tilted building’s tops began descending they hit the floors or columns at eccentric angles which easily detached the floors and buckled the columns. In order for the lower building section to offer any meaningful resistance to the falling building top the columns would have to hit each other exactly in line and in plumb and this was impossible with the top leaning causing eccentric angles of impact.

The fact is that columns have to be axially (in line and centered) aligned to support the weight of the building above. Once the top building section began tilting the columns on the side that originally buckled did not line up at all. These columns would have been hitting the floors and would have easily detached or buckled them. After the south wall buckled in Tower 2 the adjacent perimeter wall columns buckled from overloads and the columns on the opposite west side of the building, which acted as a hinge would still be bearing on each other but at an eccentric angle which means they also would have also eventually buckled as the top tilted. These columns along with some of the core columns as they buckled are probably what kicked the bottom of the top building section to the west as reported by NIST. With all the columns across the building buckled the top section began descending at an angle to the building section below. None of the columns would have been axially lined up. As the columns collided they would have hit each other at eccentric angles and easily dislodged, disconnected or buckled each other. Adding the accumulating collapsing floors and you have a release of incredible potential energy changing to kinetic energy and building momentum as the accumulating chaotic mass of debris accelerated to bedrock 7 stories into the cellars.
There have been some engineering analyses about the impacting floors slowing down the collapse so that the time to collapse should have been longer than ‘free fall’ times of an object dropped from the towers tops. Since the Tower’s outer wall columns, especially in Tower 1, pealed out like a banana, they may have been able to break the connections to the floors ahead of the floors being impacted? In other words, with the weight of the wall columns pealing outward from the vertical along with the added horizontal forces of impacting floors projecting debris outwards onto these columns; these columns, while leaning out, might have been able to break the wall-to-floor connections ahead of the level of impacting floors? If this is possible than I believe that the connection failures could could have traveled down the sides of the buildings at a speed faster than free fall times. This might explain the rapid collapses especially in Tower 1. The wall-to-floor connection failures could have traveled down the building sides faster than ‘free fall’ times and in effect started the floors falling before they were impacted by the accumulating mass of impacted floors above.
The heavy exterior wall columns in the 1500 foot high builddings while pealing off could project the column sections outwards a great distance. This distance (500 feet) was proposed as only being made possible by explosive forces. I disagree. If a wall is strong enough it can fall out flat to a distance equal to its height.
Much has been made of the fact that NIST only analyzed the events up to the point where the Towers were poised to collapse before runaway collapse began and failed to pursue the remaining collapse. This was largely because after collapse began the chaotic impacts of the floors, walls and columns colliding could not possibly be analyzed accurately with even the strongest computers. It was a strain on computer capabilities to analyze the mechanism of collapse past the point of runaway disintegration.

The compression of air in the elevator and air-conditioning shafts by the collapsing upper building section and floors, would project air, smoke, and dust down these shafts and out of the air intake or discharge openings on the lower mechanical equipment floors in the exterior walls. This accounts for the plumes of smoke seen projecting outwards from the buildings well below the collapsing floors. There were quite extensive vertical HVAC shafts built into the building. These shafts are connected to air conditioning exhaust and intake ducts open to the exterior on the mechanical floors. Collapse of these shafts would force the dust and smoke out these HVAC exhaust and intake openings in the side of the building.

The lightweight aluminum cladding’s breaking free from the buckling columns also would have been propelled outward a great distance by this expanding cloud of air and dust. This would account for huge dust clouds and pieces of aluminum seen projected outwards from the upper sections of the collapsing buildings. The light reflected off these aluminum pieces at the north wall of Tower 2 would be interpreted as flashes from explosive ‘squibs’. The flashes below the buckling east wall may have been from the aluminum cladding breaking free from the lower columns as they expanded after being unloaded of axial weight by the buckling of the wall above and their expansion breaking the connections to the cladding. Also explosives leave characteristic tears and fractures in steel, and such indications were not found in the debris pile.

After any fire in which the building collapses, there often remain deep seated, pockets of fire deep within the rubble pile These pockets of fire sometimes cannot be reached by water streams because of their being covered by debris. Air is sometimes drawn up from the bottom of the pile and feeds these inaccessible fires with air. The heat can become intense and can heat any steel in proximity of the fire until the steel is glowing red hot. These pockets of fire are common at burning building collapses and in no way evidence that that explosives or thermite were used to demolish the buildings.

These fires are similar to blacksmith fires where air is blown into the charcoals by a bellows to raise the temperature of the fire to heat a piece of steel or iron. The blacksmith can tell how hot the steel is by its color and can tell when the steel is soft enough to work it with a hammer.

These deep seated fires often have to be dug out by shovels, back hoes or grapplers in order to expose the burning material for extinguishment. It is common to hold off hitting the fire with water until it is fully exposed in order to prevent the great amount of steam created from obscuring the work area until the fire is fully exposed and can be extinguished. This is what is happening in the picture of a grappler pulling out a piece of glowing hot steel from the debris pile so often described as molten steel. Such fires are incapable of melting steel unless they are supplied with pure oxygen.

Pure oxygen is used in oxyacetylene torches to actually burn and melt the steel when cutting. These torches were used to help clear the debris pile during search and recovery operations. A slag of melted and re-solidified steel and FEO2 is formed on the opposite side of the cut. This slag formation was erroneously reported to be evidence of cutter charges having been used to sever the columns.

Much has been made of the presence of molten metal in the debris pile after the collapse. Presumably this molten metal was somehow connected to explosions or thermite charges, but there were Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) battery rooms on some floors of the Towers and Building 7. These battery rooms supplied continuous battery power to computers if the electricity failed for any reason. These batteries contained tons of lead which melts at low temperatures [327 C (621 F)]. The heat form the fires in the debris pile could easily have melted this lead or the aluminum from the plane which were probably the metals that were seen flowing through the pile. NIST reported UPS in the 13th floor of Building 7 and the 81st floor of Tower 2. Additionally the EPA reported over 400 different chemicals in the dust and debris. These chemicals could easily be assembled conceptually to propose any type of chemical reaction imaginable including thermite reactions. In addition thermite reactions are rapid and wouldn’t last the hours or days at which times the molten metal was observed.

About the concrete destruction into dust; F.R. Greening did a paper called Energy Transfer in the WTC Collapse in which he says “the energy required to crush concrete to 100 μm particles is 1.9 × 1011 J, which is well within the crushing capacity of the available energy. Hence it is theoretically possible for the WTC collapse events to have crushed more than 90 % of the floor concrete to particles well within the observed particle size range.”
http://nistreview.org/WTC-REPORT-GREENING.pdf I would also investigate the possibility that the concrete was sub par due to freezing during curing or too much air or water having been added during construction.

The windows broken out and marble wall panels detached on the interior of the first floor lobby were probably because of torque forces experienced on the lower floor columns from the plane impacts many floors above. The reports of “explosions” in the cellars were also probably from such column displacements or from jet fuel ignitions in the elevator shafts. If you stick a stick into the ground and hit it with another stick most of the deformation will be in the ground around the bottom of the stick. There were reports of split walls and ceiling collapses on many floors after the planes hit.

In conclusion I think the reports of controlled demolition can be explained by sounds or sights produced by the plane impacts and jet fuel and air explosions; the sounds of the Towers collapse, - remember most of the people in Tower 1 did not know Tower 2 had collapsed and attributed the sounds of that collapse to be happening in the building they were in. When the interior of building 7 collapsed it would have produced explosive sounds before the exterior walls began collapsing.

2/24/2008 10:12 AM  

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