fire temperatures , facts not fantasy .

almost every " proof " that the WTC collapses were not caused entirely by the culmative effects of a plane impact and fire . makes various claims about the temperature @ which kerosene will burn

just consider this picc:

external image
[Image links to full sized version]

flame one [ the sooty / yellow flame ] burns @ 490 centigrade

flame 4 [ roaring flame ] burns @ 1500 centigrade

just something to think agout - environment plays a big role in affecting the temperature at which a fire will burn


to put it in the clear context of a building fire , house fire temp , yup - your own house will burn @ over 1100 degrees F , who would have thought it ? its only wood , paper cloth etc etc - simple hydrocarbons right ?

the steel didnt melt , no one but conspiracists staw man arguments claim it did - does a black smiths forge melt iron and steel ?? no it does not - but he is still able to work his pieces with ease , steel does not have to come even close to melting point for its mechanical properties to change dramatically - how hard is that to grasp ?

EDIT : for typo and missing data


[Mod Edit: Image Resized. Please review this post. - Jak]

[edit on 31/3/06 by JAK]

[edit on 31-3-2006 by ignorant_ape]

In only 3 1/2 minutes, the heat from a house fire can reach over 1100 degrees Fahrenheit

Man I didnt think normal house fires could get that hot that fast.

Thanks for that link on house temps

I posted this in another thread, but it is appropriate here.


here is an interesting case study of a real fire test. Although the test was conducted in a timber framed apartment flat, it is interesting to see how high the temperature got from the fire.

Peak temperatures in the living area of the fire flat reached approximately 1000°C and remained at this level until the test was stopped at 64 minutes having reached one of the planned termination criteria.

1000 C, huh? that's higher than the 1000 F posted above. What were they burning in there, Thermite?

Nah,

The fire test compartment consisted of a single flat on level 3 of the building. The fire load was provided by timber cribs spread over the floor area of the flat.

Clearly wood is a much more dangerous material in a fire than jet fuel.

I also found this page which has the following chart:

The effect of ventilation and fire load on fire severity is illustrated in Figure 2. Fire tests were conducted in compartments where the fire load and the natural ventilation were varied. The well ventilated compartments experienced lower temperatures and fires of shorter duration. In Figure 2 the numbers identified with each curve indicate the fire load density in kg/m2 (ie 60, 30 or 15) and the ventilation area as a proportion of the façade area (ie ½ or ¼).

Now it has been claimed that the black smoke is due to the lack of oxygen? Isn’t this the same as saying that the fires were poorly ventilated? From that chart, a poorly ventilated fire is hotter, not cooler.

Note that the fire load of a typical office space runs about 30 kg/m2. But for the WTC you would have to account for the additional fire load from the jet fuel and the aircraft cabin components.


Another study of compartment fires

As can be seen in the above table, peak measured temperatures exceeded 1300oC in five tests, this measurement being supported by the observation of total heat fluxes of up to 350 kW/m2 and velocities of over 15m/s.
These values are somewhat higher than those observed in typical full-scale compartment fire tests and can be attributed in part to the highly insulating walls, the inclusion of plastic in the fuel and the short residence times (due to high flow rates).

Plastic in the fuel, huh? I wonder if that is anything like what is found in a typical office environment (i.e. computers, etc) ?


[edit on 31-3-2006 by HowardRoark]

[edit on 31-3-2006 by HowardRoark]

Perhaps we would all do well to realize that before September 11, no steel framed skyscraper had ever collapsed due to fire. It is a documented fact.

So let me show you something.

Illustrati on of Impacts
wikipedia.org

The bunching of all internal columns in a relatively narrow center shaft in a building is an "all your eggs in one basket" configuration-- if that region on any floor below the top floor is catastrophically damaged, the entire building is doomed. This stands in stark contrast to earlier generations of skyscrapers which utilize full skeletons of stepped columns, usually one row approximately every 25 feet (7.6 m) from the center to the perimeter.

Note the impact of the plane into WTC2. At the presented trajectory, with the documented building properties of WTC2, the plane's fuselage SHOULD have exited the opposite side of the building, clipping perhaps 1 or 2 support columns on the way through. Simple mathematics will confirm this. The weight of the plane, multiplied by the approximate speed (@500mph) will produce enough force for the fuselage to be ejected, or at the very least, puncture the opposite side of WTC2. Something must have stopped it.

(As for WTC1...A diagram on Wikipedia.org, of all places, shows only 3 support columns damaged beyond repair. Hardly catastrophic, if one considers the number in the central column. So we're still left with the question: WTF mate?)

And if something must have stopped it, then we come to the question of what? the two, perhaps 3 support columns it would have struck? Perhaps, but that means that the combined fuel would have had to burn at minimum 2000 degrees centigrade for a little less than an hour (the time between impact and collapse). Simply put, There couldn't have been enough fuel in a building of such construction. Fires? Yes. Steel forge temperature fires? No.

The core column support system for both WTC facilites was designed to be more than capable of handling an airplane impact, thus ruling out the shock of impact causing a major event in the collapse of WTC 1 or 2.

Building Collapses
wikipedia.org

Note the neat little piles that represent the all but destroyed WTC complex, all but WTC5 seem to have completely collapsed...That means that 6 buildings were allegedly destroyed by 2 planes. I highly doubt it, but that's probably my inner skeptic.

Say what you will, I doubt either side will ever win this argument, short of a security leak or a declassified document. Eventually, (we'll understand that this though it sounds horribly cliche now) IS America's Reichstag fire.


[edit on 3-31-2006 by Loki]

If I am not mistaken, the topic of this thread is not “What columns were damaged.” It is “fire temperatures, facts not fantasy.”

Please do not try to hijack this thread or to sidetrack it with diversions.

Ape has started a thread that is highly worthwhile discussing.

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about fire, heat, and flame temperatures.

If you want to talk about something else, start a new thread.

Okay, fine.

You see above the areas impacted by the plane. Do you honestly belive the fire ranged HOT enough, in an area SPREAD OUT enough to give any of the floors what you'd describe as 'catastrophic' damage?

If the information I read is correct, Those major support beams were about 25' apart. That means that the 'core' of that fire (That would be the area measured in your figures above, in the reckoning of fire temperature)

Would have to be no smaller than 200' in diameter. Judging by the pictures I saw of WTC1+2, that was not the case, as there were people on the same floors as impact zones who were neither burned alive nor suffocated by the massive sucking heat of the several hundred cubic feet (alleged) of hot coals and fire that would doubtlessly consume all the oxygen in the area.

Furthermore, should this magical fire still have occured in WTC1 or 2 for that matter, both would have structural damage predisposed toward a certain side. Now, let us pretend that catastrophic damage was done to enough of the columns to topple the building; If the public story were to be correct, the buildings would lean to one side, and then fall. Simple physics suggests that gravity will pull the building that way, especially with the weights involved.

Just something to chew on, Peace.

Originally posted by Loki
Okay, fine.

You see above the areas impacted by the plane. Do you honestly belive the fire ranged HOT enough, in an area SPREAD OUT enough to give any of the floors what you'd describe as 'catastrophic' damage?

Why not? What was in those offices before the impact? Cubicles, furniture, computers, paper, paper and more paper, not to mention carpets, wood, etc.

Then you add the fuel from the aircraft, AND the aircraft itself. What’s in an aircraft? Seat backs, overhead bins, wiring insulation, etc. all made out of plastics. Seat cushions, thermal insulation etc, made out of various types of foam products, cargo, lugage from the passengers, etc.

Don’t forget about all of those pesky little oxygen generators.

Which all adds up to an awful lot of fuel to feed a fire.

Originally posted by Loki

If the information I read is correct, Those major support beams were about 25' apart. That means that the 'core' of that fire (That would be the area measured in your figures above, in the reckoning of fire temperature) Would have to be no smaller than 200' in diameter.

Careful, you are starting to drift off topic again.

(what figures are you talking about?)

Originally posted by Loki
Judging by the pictures I saw of WTC1+2, that was not the case, as there were people on the same floors as impact zones who were neither burned alive nor suffocated by the massive sucking heat of the several hundred cubic feet (alleged) of hot coals and fire that would doubtlessly consume all the oxygen in the area.

Has anyone EVER died from lack of oxygen caused by a fire?

(how do you know that hey weren’t sticking their heads out the windows just to get fresh air to breath?)

Originally posted by Loki
Furthermore, should this magical fire still have occured in WTC1 or 2 for that matter, both would have structural damage predisposed toward a certain side. Now, let us pretend that catastrophic damage was done to enough of the columns to topple the building; If the public story were to be correct, the buildings would lean to one side, and then fall. Simple physics suggests that gravity will pull the building that way, especially with the weights involved.

Just something to chew on, Peace.

Whoops, your are completely off topic now. We aren’t talking about the structure, we are talking about how hot the fires could have gotten.


The common and oft repeated claim that the fire could not have exceeded 800 C is simply not true. It is based on an imperfect understanding of the thermodynamics involved.






[edit on 31-3-2006 by HowardRoark]

I'll give my 5 cents.

A few years ago, before the 9-11 an inspection was made to the WTC steel truss joists, that were under the floor. It was discovered that many of the steel truss joists had lost their fire foam protection, this means bad maintenance, and bad maintenance kill's people.

Without the protective foam the light metal that steel truss joists are made did not resist much time in a fire even with temperatures that not allow the melting of the metal but allowing the truss to become soft and bend. In a structure like this if one element fails the pressure on the others is to high to support it, and the structure bend and break, collapsing.
Note:
'Lightweight bar joists should not be used to support floors in high-rise buildings. The National Fire Protection Association has shown unprotected steel bar joist fail after five or ten minutes of fire exposure.'

Let's face it the building were very good when it was built in 1966-1977 but obsolete by today's construction and safety standards.

I could imagine that WTC maintenance was expensive, so there must have been cut backs somewhere, protective foam was probably one of the cuts.

I give this as an example, i know that there are historical buildings beloging to high level institutions (banks, assurance, governement, others ) in my country, that were built 200 year ago, they have their buildings foundations completely unprotected, if there is for example a small earthquake they will come down. Do you think that they told their employees about that? No they didn't, they said nothing to people who still are unaware of their fate in case of a small earthquake or fire.

For me there is one word for WTC collapsing: Bad Maintenance kills people.

About the wtc7 collapsing it's another story


Crustas

Ok, I can agree with you on one point that there is an imperfect understanding of exactly what's involved. This was a once-in-a-lifetime type of disaster that it will be impossible to exactly reproduce. There were so many variables that neither side will ever be fully proven, and nobody on either side will be fully satisfied.

Basically, it's never happened before, it'll never happen again, we're just arguing about who has the better theory, and it's apples and oranges. I'd not hesitate to believe that it'd burn very hot, maybe even hot enough to heat steel to the point of being soft. But I just don't believe it was the primary cause of the collapse.

You know that thing with the flames makes sense. I remember learning in elementary school about stars and how hot they are.

Green, I think, is the least hot, and either white or blue is the hottest, with yellow, orange, and red somewhere in the middle.

Those buildings were designed to withstand the impact of a 707, and the jets that hit them weren't that much bigger.