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2004-10-20 Home Front: WoT

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Posted by Steve White 2004-10-20 12:38:33 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I always assumed that as Tower 2 was hit a lot lower down the compressive pressure on the weakening steel was greater, and so it collapsed first.

Posted by Grunter 2004-10-20 12:02:20 PM|| 2004-10-20 12:02:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Mohammed Atta was the one flying that plane. He was a better pilot, hit Tower 2 lower, and had much more "tilt" so his plane hit on more of a diagonal and probably did much more damage to the structure of the building. Bastard.

Posted by Seafarious 2004-10-20 12:07:42 PM|| 2004-10-20 12:07:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 Physical chemistry:

When steel is heated to about 1,000 degrees F, it begins to expand, at the rate of 1 inch per foot. A ten foot beam evenly heated will grow ten inches longer.

Consider that the rivets, welds, and fasteners for the steel in the two towers were intended to handle movement stresses of an eight of an inch or less, any heating of the steel would begin to produce point failures.

Far sooner than the beams would start to sag from melting, the phase change would cause them to begin to push the exterior panels away from the building. You can see this on many of the videos. The panels jump outward followed by a puff of smoke. The loons see this as proof the Towers were blown up, rather than a result of the physics of the fire.

As the connections between the beams began to fail, the load stresses shifted. The near vertical collapse was due to the inability of the less heated exterior columns and beams to support an interior where the welds and rivets had been destroyed by heat related expansion. The center fell in, resulting in the generalized pancaking of the entire building.

The fireproofing was not intended to resist stripping by the friction of tons of aircraft sliding across it. This is not a defect nor a design flaw. Fireproofing material is just that, fireproofing. You can scrape it off if you try.

If you watch the video for Twoer Two, it can be interpreted that the pilot was attempting to strike the corner of the tower and possible topple it. Granted, the pilots were having obvious control problems (more typified by the attack at the Pentagon) but were I flying that sort of mission, I would try to destabilize the building by not hitting it square.

Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-10-20 12:10:03 PM|| [http://blog.simmins.org] 2004-10-20 12:10:03 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 There was a documentary a while ago that I thought explained the collapse of the towers rather well, echoing what Chuck said, if I remember correctly. The towers' design was ingenious in that it allowed for plenty of floor space, but no one would have been able to foresee and plan for a terrorist attack such as this.

Posted by Rafael 2004-10-20 12:58:41 PM|| 2004-10-20 12:58:41 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Slightly off topic, but I have always been awed by analysis by a structural engineer I heard on Sept 12 rr 13. His theory was that the debris pile for each tower, by all calculations, considering all the structure and "stuff" composing the towers, should have been 20-25 stories tall and not the 6-8 at ground zero.
The energy release was off the charts when the towers collapsed.

Posted by Capsu78 2004-10-20 2:56:34 PM|| 2004-10-20 2:56:34 PM|| Front Page Top

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