Thermite theory vs. Explosives theory

Originally posted by Pootie
It actually does not "just hold the molten steel against the" target. It focuses a linear cutting jet much like a cutting torch, or in the other example, an array of jets in a linear layout. Of course it would cut slightly slower than HE chevron shaped chardes... but without the reports AND given the correct mixture, the brisance could be just high enough to make fast cuts but not actually explode. This would be desirable, low noise while severing the core just prior to blowing the exoskeleton with some sort of HE cutter charges (this noise would be drowned out by the "collapse" noise").

So, in the end, this would look something like it was torch cut? Just clarifying to make sure I got it right.

If so, there goes the "it looks exactly like a torch cut therefore thermite couldn't have been used" arguement.

Originally posted by Pootie

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
So, where's all the leftover "cutter device" shells? Find me one
in a rubble pic. Thanks.

Since TWO FEMA photographers were the only people allowed to photograph and all other cameras were confiscated at military checkpoints entering the restricted zone, I think you know this will be difficult/impossible.

What are they made of? Could they have been part of the pools of "lava"? I'm saying that if they were just in the basement to sever the core, then maybe they got mixed in with all the molten metal and such. Just a thought.

Originally posted by Griff
What are they made of?

I do not think the patents describe the alloy used for the casing of the devices... It would either:

A: Need to have a very high melting point to survive the reaction.

or

B: Have a fairly high melting point and be thick enough to survive just long enough for the reaction/cut to complete.

If these devices were used they could have probably been found if A is the case and rescuers that were there to find HUMANS were looking for them. If they survived the initial reaction, I do not see them melting in the resultant pile... maybe mixed into the "pools", but probably not totally destroyed.

Originally posted by Griff
So, in the end, this would look something like it was torch cut? Just clarifying to make sure I got it right.

That is the idea behind the devices, not to make it necessarily "look" the same, but to achieve the same goal in similar fashion. I have not used one, nor are photos readily available for comparison. Someone would need to contact the patent holders for before and after photos.

Originally posted by Griff
So, in the end, this would look something like it was torch cut? Just clarifying to make sure I got it right.

If so, there goes the "it looks exactly like a torch cut therefore thermite couldn't have been used" arguement.

It would be similar in that they were both obviously melted, but no, they wouldn't look the same.

Even with a device forcing it sideways like that, it's still going to be a sloppy mess compared to a cutting torch. With uneven burn times, some of its going to stick around and melt the steel longer than other bits, making a more sloppy, uneven cut. No matter how well it's forced out, some of it would escape and run down the steel column as well, as thermite is prone to do, and that would leave obvious signs all over the column. And you're going to end up with a lot more slag on the sides and around the cut than you ever would with a cutting torch.

It just wouldn't look the same. With one you're cutting the steel with a flow of burning material that has a tendency to do what it wants no matter how you try to direct it. With the other, you're just heating the steel up until it's molten and then blowing it out with a puff of air. Naturally, it's going to produce different results.

Originally posted by Pootie
If these devices were used they could have probably been found if A is the case and rescuers that were there to find HUMANS were looking for them. If they survived the initial reaction, I do not see them melting in the resultant pile... maybe mixed into the "pools", but probably not totally destroyed.

This brings another question.

How many firemen, police officers, rescue workers would have really known the difference between one of those and a column protector or some other steel framing? I mean to mask the cases, they could have put "dummy" column protectors that look similar around.

I'm a structural engineer and I don't know all the steel framing variations out there. Do people really think that firemen, police and rescue workers could tell the difference? Not saying anything about the intellegence of firemen, police officers or others, just that they are not trained in that area.

Originally posted by Griff
How many firemen, police officers, rescue workers would have really known the difference between one of those and a column protector or some other steel framing? I mean to mask the cases, they could have put "dummy" column protectors that look similar around.

Honestly, I doubt any of them would've been able to tell the difference.

However, I do believe they would've noticed the slag all around them and the burn marks. I think that would've thrown up some red flags that maybe those weren't just part of the steel framing.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
It would be similar in that they were both obviously melted, but no, they wouldn't look the same.

Here we go again... stating your opinion as if it is fact...

Originally posted by whiterabbit
Even with a device forcing it sideways like that, it's still going to be a sloppy mess compared to a cutting torch.

On the inside faces... correct? Assuming the correct amount of aluminothermic is used why would it HAVE to be "more sloppy"?

Originally posted by whiterabbit
With uneven burn times, some of its going to stick around and melt the steel longer than other bits, making a more sloppy, uneven cut.

If properly mixed and ignited... why would it HAVE to have an uneven burn time?

Originally posted by whiterabbit
Honestly, I doubt any of them would've been able to tell the difference.

However, I do believe they would've noticed the slag all around them and the burn marks. I think that would've thrown up some red flags that maybe those weren't just part of the steel framing.

Many rescue/search have claimed to have "noticed" explosions... Would it MATTER if they came out and said they saw slag? NO. Would it raise "red flags" ? Probably not... does their "explosives" testimony get any cred? Not really.

You can't have it both ways.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
However, I do believe they would've noticed the slag all around them and the burn marks. I think that would've thrown up some red flags that maybe those weren't just part of the steel framing.

Well, seeing as these columns would have been hidden in the debris in the basement. Remember, we are talking about the inner core columns in the basement, where directly after the failure would have been on fire anyway or how else do you get temperatures so high down there. How long was it until people actually saw the basement columns?

I understand what you are saying but they wouldn't have had access to the inner core columns in the basement until the fires were out etc. After that, who's going to say "hey, those columns look all burnt up and it doesn't look right"? Especially when you have things down there like the "meteorite" (which, BTW is a conglomerate of slag)? I just don't think your arguement that there would be too much slag and fire residue holds water to debunk the thermite theory. Not when you think about how long it took people to actually see the basement inner core columns.

Now, if we are talking about columns on the surface (like the famous pic), I'd have to agree with you on that.

Originally posted by Pootie
Here we go again... stating your opinion as if it is fact...

It's not an opinion that a directed stream of thermite would leave different evidence than melting steel with a flame and blowing it out with a puff of air. It's two completely different ways of doing it.

You obviously don't have to believe that, but that's the crooked truth. Not an opinion.

On the inside faces... correct? Assuming the correct amount of aluminothermic is used why would it HAVE to be "more sloppy"?

No, not just on the inside faces, although it probably mostly be there.

As the stream gets forced against the steel, it's going to melt the steel against it AND below it. As it melts the steel below, it's going to run back out, underneath the device.

It's basically a liquid when it's burning. It's going to find a way to go down.

If properly mixed and ignited... why would it HAVE to have an uneven burn time?

From what I understand, it's because there's a certain amount of uncontrollable variables involved in it. Moisture, distribution, etc.

I mean, again from what I understand, the difference in burn time isn't so much that you could sit there and necessarily notice it, but enough that some parts of the steel will get a slightly longer job done to them and therefore more damage.


It's just not going to the be same, dude. You're talking about cutting something with (basically) a stream of burning liquid that has a tendency to run straight down whenever it can, versus heating the steel up to molten with a flame and blowing it out with a puff of air.

There's no device in the world that will give you identical results with such radically different methods.

Originally posted by Pootie
Many rescue/search have claimed to have "noticed" explosions... Would it MATTER if they came out and said they saw slag? NO. Would it raise "red flags" ? Probably not... does their "explosives" testimony get any cred? Not really.

You can't have it both ways.

Hey, the explosives testimony is a whole other deal. And honestly, I don't know why you're bringing it up to me, since I started this thread trying to show that explosives are MUCH more plausible than thermite.

But, regardless, there wasn't any testimony about devices with slag and burn marks around them like there were with explosions.

Originally posted by Griff
Well, seeing as these columns would have been hidden in the debris in the basement. Remember, we are talking about the inner core columns in the basement, where directly after the failure would have been on fire anyway or how else do you get temperatures so high down there. How long was it until people actually saw the basement columns?

That's a really good point actually, and you're right. If the thermite was only on the columns at the base of the towers, then they wouldn't have found any devices until they got all that unburied. And I'm sure you're right that many of them would've been lost because of the smouldering condition of it. I still think a few of them would've survived, though.

But I guess it also depends on which thermite theory we're talking about. Some people say it was just in the base of the tower. Others say it was through several floors (or all of them). If it was more than just the base of the tower, than in that case there probably would've been devices visible immediately after the collapse.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
Hey, the explosives testimony is a whole other deal. And honestly, I don't know why you're bringing it up to me, since I started this thread trying to show that explosives are MUCH more plausible than thermite.

Any well known explosives (RDX, HMX, PETN,. TNT, Composition C4, TATP) would have left easily detectable residues so you pretty much have to rule out large scale uses of these items.

Which leaves us with:

A. Fusion devices that little is known about. (I will concede the raised tritium levels could point to this.)

B. A military explosive we are unaware of.

Am I missing something?

Originally posted by Pootie
Any well known explosives (RDX, HMX, PETN,. TNT, Composition C4, TATP) would have left easily detectable residues so you pretty much have to rule out large scale uses of these items.

I'm not so sure. Did they actually test for any of those things? And if they were just used in the base of the tower, they would've had to test those specific columns as well, and those would've been the ones (as Griff pointed out) that were smouldering in the rubble.

As for physical evidence, the explosives would leave very little. Very few would probably fail to detonate, and a column broken by an explosive would be indistinguishable (to most people) from a column wrenched apart in the collapse.

Which leaves us with:

A. Fusion devices that little is known about. (I will concede the raised tritium levels could point to this.)

B. A military explosive we are unaware of.

Am I missing something?

Well, I've also heard the theory that there could've been actual physical devices attached to the columns that physically cut them--sort of akin to a grinder with a cut-off wheel. I don't put much stock in that since that device would be fairly bulky (or it would have to be on the inside of the column) and it would have to have 110AC run to it, since something like that would be hard to run off of batteries. It's implausible, but I think even it is more plausible than the thermite theory.

But the explosives theories you suggested, I think, are all much more plausible than thermite. Less evidence, less effort to install, and less chance of unpredictability.

Originally posted by whiterabbit
I'm not so sure. Did they actually test for any of those things?

From what I read from the NIST report, they tested some. They state that they concluded it wasn't a CD using explosives from mostly the video evidence. They also say they interviewed over 1000 witnesses. I guess they missed the ones that said they heard explosions?

NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, wtc.nist.gov.... This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers.

Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse.

wtc.nist.gov...

Just to say something here. When this report first came out, it had nothing stating that they analyzed 236 pieces of steel. I believe that has been added since. Or my memory is going at age 33.

The NIST team throws out a lot of garbage like the above, but they don't tell you who actually wrote the report or what their credentials were, as if any of that really mattered at the top anyway, when you're subjected to death threats or who knows what else. They also don't tell you what all those other people thought, but they'll give you the impression that they're giving you the collective, big-brained technical analyses. As far as I know a handful of guys actually determined what went into the report, and none of them were what most people would call "qualified". I don't remember any of them being structural engineers, for example, while someone has planted in a lot of people's heads that structural engineers are somehow the relevant experts when it comes to chaotic, dynamic systems, like steel buildings falling into themselves.

Why didn't they just take a portion of the money they received, take the plans, rent out a bank of computers, and run a computer simulation?

They run very few simulations, two that I can think of: impact damage to the core and heat transfer from fires. They changed Flight 175's impact angle to get greater damage in the core, and they ramped up the parameters with their fire simulation and still didn't get anything critical to start a failure. I would say that those tests are complete failures for anyone trying to buff up any idea that the towers brought themselves down. Maybe that's why they never had the guts to try a full global collapse simulation?

Just to say something here. When this report first came out, it had nothing stating that they analyzed 236 pieces of steel. I believe that has been added since. Or my memory is going at age 33.

Where is the safety factor information?

Remember that paper by Wayne Trumpman? He cited two figures, a generic perimeter figure and a generic core figure, and now I think a watered-down core figure is available somewhere and no perimeter figure. You can't find the numbers he cites in his paper, going back through all the early NIST releases on their website, or at least I couldn't find any of them, and Jim Hoffman has told me via email that he can't find any either and thinks they were taken down. Either that or Trumpman pulled numbers out of his ass, except one of the original engineers is quoted from the 60's saying the FoS for some perimeter columns somewhere in the building was as much as 20, rather than the 5 which Trumpman cites from NIST. I think both of Trumpman's figures were conservative anyway, and I think if NIST releases any more figures they're going to be watered down even more.

Maybe this was all off-topic but someone really needs to get to the NIST about this. The team that did the WTC reports has done, and is doing, an atrocious job, for whatever reason, and they shouldn't be allowed to continue wasting time and money on garbage.

I could probably come up with something. I remember somewhere in the report, they give someone's hand calcs of the loads. We should, theoritically get a FS from that. The thing is though, that the WTC was built back when engineers used the ASD method (Allowable Stress Design). Now they use LRFD (Load Resistance Factor Design...which 7 probably was designed with). I'm more familiar with the LRFD but know a little about ASD (they are very similar...just slight differences in the way it's calculated). Anyway, I'll start looking into it and see if I can come up with their SF. Don't hold your breath though.

Sorry WhiteRabit that this is getting way off base. I have found a few things.

Here is a paper by Greening disputing Gordon Ross' paper "Momentum Transfer Analysis
of the Collapse of the Upper Storeys of WTC 1"

Source: www.journalof911studies.com...

4. The use of a safety factor of 4 in the calculation of the elastic strain energy
On pages 6 and 7 of Ross’ article we see an undefined “safety factor”, arbitrarily set at 4, used to
calculate the elastic strain energy of the lower and upper storeys. In looking for any justification
for the use of a safety factor of 4 for the WTC we read in Reference /6/:
“ The factor of safety is typically not greater than 2 in building structural designs.”
(Note added July 19th, 2006: S. Sunder at a NIST Progress Report on the WTC Building
Performance, presented Oct 19th, 2004, stated that the safety factor for the yielding and buckling
of core columns is 1.67.)

This is actually reinforced by "Civil Engineering Reference Manual for the PE Exam" Michael R. Lindeburg, PE



Now, this doesn't mean that every building is designed this way and the towers could have a larger SF. Too bad no one has the construction documents to verify anything.

From what I've read, and maybe you can confirm this, Griff, those factors are typically much higher with skyscrapers and buildings that use experimental construction methods, for enhanced safety. Housing and more common buildings may have a factor closer to 1 because we know more what to expect with those buildings, but not so much when you get into more uncommon structures, especially structures built in dense urban areas.

Here's additional info from the STJ911 group's site:

The Engineering News Record (ENR) contained a number of articles on the design and construction of the World Trade Center. The article "How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings" quotes lead architect John Skilling:

"live loads on these [perimeter] columns can be increased more than 2000% before failure occurs."
--John Skilling, in Engineering News Record, 4/2/1964

That would be a factor of 20, contradicting Sunder's suggestion pretty harshly.

A telegraph from the architectural firm Richard Roth, partner at Emery Roth & Sons, was distributed to reporters on February 14, 1965. The telegraph was in response to claims by real estate baron and Lawrence Wien that the design of the Twin Towers was unsound.

THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS CARRIED OUT BY THE FIRM OF WORTHINGTON, SKILLING, HELLE & JACKSON IS THE MOST COMPLETE AND DETAILED OF ANY EVER MADE FOR ANY BUILDING STRUCTURE. THE PRELIMINARY CALCULATIONS ALONE COVER 1,200 PAGES AND INVOLVE OVER 100 DETAILED DRAWINGS.
...
4. BECAUSE OF ITS CONFIGURATION, WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY THAT OF A STEEL BEAM 209' DEEP, THE TOWERS ARE ACTUALLY FAR LESS DARING STRUCTURALLY THAN A CONVENTIONAL BUILDING SUCH AS THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING WHERE THE SPINE OR BRACED AREA OF THE BUILDING IS FAR SMALLER IN RELATION TO ITS HEIGHT.
...
5. THE BUILDING AS DESIGNED IS SIXTEEN TIMES STIFFER THAN A CONVENTIONAL STRUCTURE. THE DESIGN CONCEPT IS SO SOUND THAT THE STRUCTURAL ENGINEER HAS BEEN ABLE TO BE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE IN HIS DESIGN WITHOUT ADVERSELY AFFECTING THE ECONOMICS OF THE STRUCTURE. ...
--City in the Sky, p 134-6

Wouldn't you love to have your hands on that analysis? lol. Twelve-hundred pages of calculations, and we probably couldn't perform a single one of them the same way today because of the massive lack of critical structural information.

Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson White Paper

A white paper on the structure of the Twin Towers carried out by the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson contained eleven numbered points, including:

3. The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 707-DC 8) traveling at 600 miles per hour. Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact.


--City in the Sky, p 131

Glanz and Lipton summarize the findings of the white paper:

The Vierendeel trusses would be so effective, according to the engineers' calculations, that all the columns on one side of a tower could be cut, as well as the two corners and several columns on the adjacent sides, and the tower would still be strong enough to withstand a 100-mile-per-hour wind.
--City in the Sky, p 133

stj911.org...

[edit on 27-3-2007 by bsbray11]