AE911 Truth's WTC7 Evaluation Computer Modelling Project

No one has shown that collapse would not initiate in the NIST scenario given the addition of the side plates or any other structural element omitted by NIST. Hulsey and Arup specifically tested alternative scenarios and found, in those alternative scenarios, there would be side plate trapping (and I'm being generous by characterizing Hulsey's conclusions to date as actual findings, given that his approach to local connection failures seemingly makes little sense). (Arup also found that in several of those alternative scenarios, the girder still failed after the side plate trapping.) But no one--not you, not Hulsey, not Arup, not Weidlinger--has recreated NIST's comprehensive model of the first 16 floors of WTC7 and tested, as NIST did, how the observed fires--acting in an actual progression scenario--would damage those floors. Reducing the problem to merely being whether the girder moves against the side plate at a certain point in time under a specific set of conditions does nothing to undermine NIST's report unless you show that also happens under NIST's scenario, taking into account the fire progression and the damage in the surrounding area.

 

Sure--I summarized the Arup findings a few months ago here.

 

What do you believe happened to column 79?

 

What I believe is irrelevant, but, if you must know, I believe it lost lateral support and buckled, either at the 13th/14th floors like NIST believes or at the 10th/11th floors like Weidlinger Associates believes or at some other location that none of the firms who studied the collapse could accurately model given that huge unknowns re the actual fire conditions. It's clear, however, that column was the likely locus of collapse initiation due to the observed collapse of the mechanical penthouse at the outset of the collapse.

 

Ok, I see. What about A2001, what happened to it?

 

If it failed at the collapse onset, it likely failed as NIST predicted in a heating phase or as ARUP predicted in a cooling or heating phase, depending on exactly how intense the fires were around and and how they progressed and damaged it and nearby elements. Alternatively, it could have survived and then failed after the failure predicted by Weidlinger Associates on the 10th/11th floors caused column 79 to buckle. Can you please make a point or stop spamming the thread with a potentially off-topic dialogue?

 

Can you please state what the purpose and the objectives of the Hulsey study are? I think most relevant would be the stated purposes at the time that monies were solicited from the general public to pay Hulsey hundreds of thousands of dollars!
Please support your answer with relevant citations (verbatim quotes, and reference to sources - remember the no-click policy)!

We shall then be able to check whether my arguments are germane to "the issue" (which is, as Mick reminded you, "AE911Truth's WTC7 Evaluation Computer Modelling Project", conducted by Dr. Leroy Hulsey, not by NIST), and whether yours are.

Edited to add:
Actually, to say that my various citations by AE911Truth, Hulsey and his team member of the purposes of AE911Truth's WTC7 computer modelling project, conducted by Hulsey, are "not germane to the issue of who bears responsibility", when "the issue" in this thread is actually AE911Truth's WTC7 computer modelling project, conducted by Hulsey is, frankly, preposterous and bordering on impertinent.

Obviously Hulsey and AE911Truth, and no one else, are of course fully responsible for "the issue", i.e. their project. Szamboti would do well not to deflect from that.
"It doesn't matter what Hulsey said he would do"?? Hulsey, his team and AE911Truth are the ONLY ones who matter!

 

What others here may not tell you is that while the vertical kink in the east penthouse does point to a failure of column 79 it only tells you it failed below the penthouse, not where that failure occurred. Interestingly, the evidence shows the east penthouse only came down into the main building a couple of stories which would indicate that column 79 only failed high in the building. The points of evidence for this are

1. Daylight can only be observed through the windows of the top story.
2. The shock wave goes top to bottom.
3. Window breakage only occurs from the roofline down 15 stories.
4. There is no exterior column deformation observed on the east side as there would be if lateral support was lost.
5. There is no dust emanating from windows on the east side until the exterior starts coming down and the east penthouse dropped into the building 6 to 7 seconds before that.

What this also means is that all 24 core columns were still intact for most of their height after the east penthouse fell. To cause a simultaneous drop of all four walls of the building, as observed, all 24 core columns would have to be pulled nearly simultaneously starting in the center a fraction of a second earlier.

A reason the east penthouse might have been taken down separately first is that it was eccentrically located in the northeast corner. The screen wall and west penthouse, which also sat on the roof, were located in the center of the 144 foot wide building.

Of course, this situation is a lot more plausible and would explain the observations much better than the Rube Goldberg situation that NIST and some others are trying to feed us. Several years after the release of the NIST WTC 7 report, when the drawings were released, it was found that NIST needed to deceptively ignore, omit, and distort several pertinent structural features to even make it have any plausibility. Their analysis looks and sounds like a classic cover-up, where things don't naturally add up and the situation is then contrived.

 

Tony thinks the entire mechanical penthouse of the building only collapsed into the building a few floors worth of distance and then magically stopped. What caused such a collapse? I'll leave it to Tony to spin that yarn, but I recall previously seeing him say something to the effect of that it was engineered that way to make the collapse look more like a natural collapse. Or something. It's a completely silly theory and illustrates only the extent to which one must distort reality to make the controlled demolition theories consistent with the visual history of the collapse. We're in danger of getting off topic, but let's run down Tony's list just to see if anything thing here actually makes sense:

1. Daylight can only be observed through the windows of the top story.

The viewpoint from which daylight can be seen in a few windows is not straight on; it is upward and so there is no reason to expect all windows to line up on the north and south side of the building. Moreover, even if all windows did line up, there is no reason to think there would necessarily be daylight through the building from a collapse of column 79 as the collapse of 79 did not necessary bring the entire eastern floor down and, even if it did, there it could well have been debris left hanging that obscured the windows.

2. The shock wave goes top to bottom.

No one but Tony knows what this means or how he quantifies it. Chances are, it means nothing and he can't quantify it. Even if he could quantify it, it is doubtful he can actual explain the significance of it in any way other than to try to shoe horn it into the theory he already believes.

3. Window breakage only occurs from the roofline down 15 stories.

Does Tony forget that no one can even see the majority of the building and so this claim is merely akin to saying window breakage only occurs on the vast majority of floors on the visible face of the building? In any case, he offers no theory for how and why windows would have to have broken differently in the visible portion of the building if column 79 had buckled as per the NIST theory. NIST, meanwhile, has noted that the window breakage occurs in a manner consistent with its theory. Moreover, how is window breakage 15 floors below the roof consistent with the notion that the mechanical penthouse was only dropped a few floors into the building and that there was no other damage to the building when the penthouse collapsed? It's not.

Here's a short piece published by the NIST authors that provides some helpful graphics re the kink and window breakage we're discussing.



Even a low resolution, you can see window breakage down several floors as the east penthouse collapses.

4. There is no exterior column deformation observed on the east side as there would be if lateral support was lost.

It seems Tony was very quick to forget that there is no angle by which one can even see the east side of the building during the collapse.

There was clearly deformation on the northeast side of the building, however, as Mick has already shown to Tony:



5. There is no dust emanating from windows on the east side until the exterior starts coming down and the east penthouse dropped into the building 6 to 7 seconds before that.

Again, there is no camera angle that actually shows the east side of the building. It is amazing that this needs to be repeated. As for no dust coming from the north east windows while the mechanical penthouse collapsed, that is of course much stronger evidence for NIST's theory than Tony's. If the penthouse's collapse had magically been arrested a few floors down, that's where we'd expect to see some dust come out. But that's not what happened. Why? Because column 79 buckled and the penthouse fell all the way through the building.

EDIT: Mods--maybe spin Tony's comment above into a new thread and leave this comment as a reply to it? Tony's made these claims a few times so I think they should be addressed somewhere, but I don't think this thread is the right spot.

 

One can see the types of things I am talking about concerning the east penthouse in the below video. It is quite clear in the views seen at about 5:35, 5:50, 8:00, and 9:30, that dust doesn't come out of the broken east side windows on the north face until the exterior starts coming down. This alone says the east side interior did not start collapsing low in the building to cause the east penthouse to fall.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnLcUxV1dPo

Benthamitemetric's attempts to diminish what I am saying need to be seen from the reality that he is a lawyer and is apparently working for the defense of a guilty party here.

 

What happened to column 79:

What happened to A2001:

What you've summarised is perhaps the most complete conclusion that an interested, questioning citizen might reach who has not yet considered controlled demolition. Column 79 buckled either at floor 13/14, or below 10 because it lost lateral support. It lost lateral support either because A2001 was heated off its seat, per NIST's most likely mechanism, or perhaps because A2001 failed while cooling, as ARUP suggested (NIST's alternative mechanism). Or perhaps A2001 didn't fail at all until after column 79 was already buckling. We can see that different mechanisms are favoured by NIST, ARUP and WA, and they can't all be right. Hulsey's study (and Tony's contributions) demonstrate that NIST's conclusions were based on significant errors - the infamous missing sideplates, the missing web stiffener, the fixed eastern supports, etc. So it seems fairly obvious that if the government account (which has already facilitated two invasions) faces competition from other accounts, and is shown to be based on significant errors and misjudgments, it's time for it to be re-examined.

 

First--the government account of WTC7 facilitated exactly zero invasions. No one knows or cares about WTC7 aside from some specialists in the engineering community (did you know it's actually a case study in a standard text on progressive collapses?) and it was never used by anyone in a high ranking government position as part of the case for any war, at least as far as I am aware. Moreover, the NIST report on WTC7 was published many years after the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason it is a topic loved by conspiracy theorists is because of the fact that exactly what happened in the building is unknowable (simply because the fire progression was unobservable--but more on that in the third point below). You are greatly overstating the importance of the building and of NIST's study of it.

Second--again, neither Hulsey nor Tony have proven anything about whether the omission of certain minor elements in the NIST model led to significant errors in NIST's conclusions. They did not even test NIST's modeled scenario. I've asked both you and Tony to specify how Hulsey could possibly come to a conclusion re the accuracy of NIST's scenario while not controlling for the most important factors that lead NIST to its conclusion (how the observed fire conditions damaged the lower 16 floors of the building over a 4.5 hour period). No answers have been forthcoming. Why? Because any interested, questioning citizen can easily see how this error in Hulsey's approach is, in fact, a fatal flaw that prevents him from honestly reaching his stated conclusion. (And, do I need to remind you that Hulsey explicitly stated his conclusion in this case long before he had even completed modeling around column 79?) As Mick has helpfully summarized, there are also additional flaws in Hulsey's approach.

Third--there is a huge difference between not being able to know exactly how the building collapsed and thinking that the building couldn't have collapsed without the use of demolition devices of some kind. NIST, Arup and WAI don't differ because they fundamentally disagree about anything; they differ in their conclusions only because they make different but reasonable assumptions about unknowable variables (most importantly--the exact heating scenario). The fact that they all differ on such assumptions and yet all come to the same overarching conclusion re the vulnerability of the building to a fire-induced progressive collapse is not something that calls that overarching conclusion into question. To the contrary, that they all arrived at the same overarching conclusion despite different approaches and assumptions about unknowable variables should greatly strengthen the confidence that any interested, questioning citizen should have in the validity of NIST's conclusion re fire being able to cause the collapse of the building. It also worth pointing out that Arup in particular was retained by the insurers of WTC7 in a multimillion dollar litigation against the owners, occupiers and designers of the building (among others). The plaintiffs in that case had hundreds of millions of reasons to uncover a plot to destroy the building and, instead, their experts offered a theory only of negligent design and construction.

Fourth--let's step back and sum up Hulsey's study and comments to date in context. At every level, Hulsey's approach and conclusions are highly suspect and, at least to this interested, questioning citizen, Hulsey's study does nothing to actually call into question the overarching conclusion reached by each of the three other studies; the only things Hulsey has called into question to date with his stated conclusions are his integrity and competence:

• There is only a single study (Hulsey's) that purports to reach a conclusion contrary to what the other studies have concluded re the vulnerability of WTC7 to progressive collapse from reasonable fire scenarios.
• Hulsey received a grant of $300,000+ from an organization (AE911Truth) that has for years dedicated itself to the theory that WTC7 could not have collapsed as a result of fire, and that same organization was explicit in wanting Hulsey's study to prove that when it chartered the study.
• Hulsey made his bias in favor of his sponsor's desired conclusion crystal clear when he announced he reached that conclusion before even completing his modeling. (It doesn't help appearances that he initially announced that conclusion at a PR event hosted in NYC by AE911Truth.)
• Each of the the NIST, Arup, and WAI studies were conducted by multiple PhDs with expertise in forensic engineering, tall building engineering or fire science, and the NIST WTC7 report was also independently peer reviewed by the Journal of Structural Engineering (whose editors and peer reviewers have similar levels of expertise), while not a single expert on forensic engineering, tall building engineering or fire science worked on Hulsey's study.
• On top of coming to a different overall conclusion re the vulnerability of the building to fire, Hulsey also seemingly came to the indefensible conclusion (which points to a fundamental error in his approach) that there could be no local connection failures at all in the building!
• Hulsey is also the only study author of the bunch to describe his conclusion in absolute terms, even when that means defying logic and the reality of his limited study to claim he proved a negative.

 

The government line on WTC 7 amounted to "Nothing to see here", in which NIST played a pivotal role. NIST was established to take the heat out of public interest, where public interest would have undermined the simple narrative which justified the ideology of preemptive war. It stalled and stalled until eventually reporting in November 2008, at the end of Bush's second term, when public attention was directed elsewhere, and any interest in WTC 7 could have little effect on the Bush administration's foreign policy ambitions.

Both have shown that NIST's critical column would not have lost lateral support in the manner indicated by NIST's most likely collapse initiation sequence. Girder A2001 would not have come unseated from the thermal expansion of connected beams, and even if it had, it would not have fallen through floor beneath, so could not have initiated a chain reaction of failures necessary to buckle column 79.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2008/11/nist-releases-final-wtc-7-investigation-report

As NIST's probable initiation sequence in reality starts and stops at minor thermal expansion of beams joining A2001, another hypothesis must be examined to account for total collapse. It is the fact that NIST tried so hard to create a sequence of events that even it describes as 'extraordinary' that arouses a great deal of suspicion that they were simply covering up. Not merely are there obvious, uncorrected errors, these errors are required to give their 'extraordinary' fire failure sequence a shot at working.

Whatever you think of Hulsey's integrity, NIST's errors are errors. The missing sideplates were missing, whoever funded Hulsey's study. The web stiffeners were absent whether or not Hulsey declared his conclusions prematurely. The support plate was incorrectly identified by NIST no matter how many PhDs peer-reviewed it.

Do you recognise the possibility that a government agenda can influence the objectivity of a government agency's scientists, the parameters of their study, and the reliability of their conclusions?

 

I'm not sure what you are citing here.
Please link to the earliest significant public interest (re. a credible source, of course) in Building 7 that
you say NIST was "established" to respond to. Thanks.

 

You were the one who claimed that the government's account was used to facilitate two invasions. Obviously that makes zero sense if (1) no one in the government ever relied on the destruction of WTC7 in arguing in support of any invasion, (2) the public generally did not even know about the collapse of WTC7 and so it is highly unlikely the public relied on the destruction of WTC7 for its support of any invasion, and (3) the government report you are criticizing and claiming helped facilitate invasions came out several years after the invasions in question had already occurred (in fact, it came out after a new, anti-war presidential administration was elected (while Obama was president elect) and NIST continued to support its conclusions through the entire 8 years of that new, anti-war presidential administration). This is not a site where you can get away with guilt through innuendo arguments. If you want to claim that NIST's findings or research methods re WTC7 were somehow used to support the Afghan or Iraq invasions, you better present some very compelling evidence. If you have no evidence, then maybe question why you feel the need to imagine that NIST's research on WTC7 played some pivotal role in geopolitics. It simply did not. The notion that its destruction was part of some sort of conspiracy master plan has always made zero sense.

Again, and it feels like I am beating a dead horse here, but no one--not Hulsey and certainly not Tony--has shown that NIST's omission of those elements lead it to a materially different conclusion re the collapse sequence than it would have concluded had those elements been included.

First of all, and this has been pointed out to you and Tony multiple times, Hulsey did not properly control for the actual conditions in which NIST observed the collapse and so Hulsey cannot say whether the outcome that Hulsey reached, to the extent different than NIST's, was due to his addition of the omitted elements or because he completely changed the fire scenario, the approach to local connection failures, or the scope of the damage modeled. No one can honestly say they know which of the aforementioned factors was the actual cause of the discrepancy between the models. That's why a careful study seeking to find error in NIST's work would have carefully controlled for all of NIST's inputs so that it could isolate the role of the omitted elements only. Hulsey's study is glaringly deficient on this count. You should stop trying to pretend it isn't or else explain succinctly and with specificity the extent to which each of the aforementioned elements contributed to the difference in conclusions. (And I know you can't take the latter route.)

Second of all, the loss of the girder in question to westward displacement relative to the girder seat may have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back in NIST's probable collapse scenario, but that doesn't mean NIST wouldn't have seen the building collapse in that very same scenario regardless of whether that particular walk off occurred. As Mick has pointed out in this very thread (which you really should actually read), NIST found that a sizable number of the beams in the region had failed or were close to failing when NIST observed that girder walk off. And Arup showed the same girder could fail in other ways in alternative heating scenarios or in the cooling phase of the building. Would the collapse have occurred in NIST's model even without the girder walkoff to the west? It seems there is a very real chance, based on the work to date. Why didn't Hulsey think to comment on this? Well, it's likely because his study couldn't even reproduce the NIST/Arup/Weidlinger results re local connection failures because he is making some fundamental error in imagining the entire building simply expands together as one along a smooth gradient of displacement.

If NIST's omission of side plates actually led to a material error in its probable collapse scenario (which, again, has not been demonstrated and certainly didn't stop the NIST report from being independently republished by the JSE), then it makes no real difference because we have additional independent reports that show the same column was susceptible to collapse in fire scenarios even if those elements are included, plus I'm sure NIST could also have come up with alternative collapse scenarios given different assumptions about the fires. It's really just a matter of fundamental understanding, at this point. If you fundamentally understand how fires damage steel, understand the unique set of circumstances in WTC7 (fires starting simultaneously on multiple floors, no fire fighting, no functioning sprinklers on the lower floors, a novel long span floor system, etc.), and understand the variety of ways in which actual experts in the relevant subjects have concluded the building could collapse as a result, then there is no reason to care whether NIST was exactly right or not. (Not even NIST would claim it was exactly right--hence "probable" collapse sequence and the oodles of explicitly stated assumptions in its actual report.) At the end of the day, no one knows with certainty the exact fire conditions in the building, so it's sufficient to demonstrate the building was vulnerable to progressive collapse in reasonable fire scenarios, which has been done. Even if "the government agenda"--whatever that means when attributed to both the Bush and Obama administrations--influenced NIST, did it influence the foreign insurance consortium that brought the Aegis insurance suit? Please just drop the innuendo and stick with demonstrable facts.

 

In Nov 2001 there was a confluence of professional and journalistic interest in WTC 7, as shown by the New York Times article titled A Nation challenged: The site; Engineers have a culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel. This kind of interest would have been very threatening to the official narrative, because quite obviously, once you question WTC 7, you doubt what was said about WTC 1 & 2. And it was engineers who were questioning it. The surprising nature of WTC 7's collapse is emphasised. High temperatures are assumed, and a fuel source is presumed to account for them. Gas leaks are considered. These ideas inch us towards looking at evidence for fuel/accelerant residue, and possibly consideration of witness testimony of explosions. It is even questioned whether diesel fuel fires would be hot enough to account for 'evaporated steel' found in the debris. You don't get evaporated steel in a diesel fire. The fact that WTC 7 leased space to government agencies is also referenced in the article. This is exactly the kind of interest you do not want to have, and not in the NYT. The best way to deal with these questions is bury them in an official study, but delay that study as long as possible. Hence the NIST investigation began in Aug 2002.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/n...e-culprit-strange-collapse-7-world-trade.html

 

Why don't you email any of the experts you quoted and see if they now think, or ever thought, that a controlled demolition was responsible for the collapse of WTC7?

William F. Baker, a preeminent expert on tall buildings who was SOM's lead on the Burj Khalifa, was actually also a main contributor to the FEMA WTC performance study.

Silvian Marcus has gone on to work with the Port Authority and other interested parties (whom conspiracy theorists would blame for involvement in any insider plot to destroy the old WTC buildings) on the new WTC buildings (including the new WTC7).

David Davidowitz was a contributor to the FEMA WTC performance study.

Dr. Barnett did, in fact, do tests of WTC7 steel in connection with the FEMA WTC performance study and concluded it was consistent with damage from office fires and in fires in the debris pile.

Reality check--there is zero chance that any of these experts actually thought or thinks that the building was brought down by a controlled demolition. Your bizarre reading of the article as if these folks suspected foul play and were shut up by the start of NIST report is simply preposterous. In fact, NIST invited contributions and consultation from dozens of similarly situated experts directly and also opened up a public comment period for anyone to participate in its process. It is even more preposterous that you jump from that unfounded innuendo to the even more attenuated innuendo that the NIST report had some role in stiffing dissent among these and other actual experts so that the US could invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

@benthamitemetric

I take it that your confidence in the reliability of the NIST probable collapse sequence (and in the integrity of the NIST report in general) is not affected to any degree by the following points identified by Hulsey et al.

• The omission of the side plates
• The omission of web stiffeners
• The omission of the full-width support plate under A2001's seat
• The neglect of friction between beams and the concrete floor slab
• The neglect of thermal expansion eastwards into the gap between the beams and the eastern connections, not just westwards into A2001
• The infinite strength attributed to the eastern connections

 

You've not quite grasped my reading of the article. The role that NIST was given was to absorb professional and public questioning of the collapse of WTC 7. Any question an official, politician or press office might get about WTC 7 could be allayed by saying well they're looking into it, we'll have to wait and see what the scientists say. Thus in the post-9/11 ideology of pre-emptive war, the narrative regarding the collapse of WTC 7 played a supporting role by its absence from public discourse. We see from the NYT article that there was professional interest in the WTC 7 'mystery', and that this interest was filtering into the press. The 'Jersey Girls' were also pressing for a public inquiry not long after 9/11. A confluence of professional and public interest would risk exposing the actual nature of the collapse, and with it, the fraud of 9/11.

 

How many times do you want to ask the same question in a slightly different way? And why don't you start actually citing to the NIST report if you want to affirmatively claim the list of points you just raised is in any way factual. Only the first two bullets are actually issues with the NIST report (albeit not issues that have been demonstrated to materially affect the conclusion thereof). The rest of the items on your list are unsupported assertions re issues that are, in fact, simply mischaracterizations of the NIST report based on your (or Hulsey's) misunderstanding thereof. Hulsey and you need to actually read the NIST report and you need to read this thread.

 

Yes, I get it. You start from the assumption that there was a fraud re 9/11 and work backwards from there while ignoring the fact that each of the quoted experts in question worked with the government on the study of WTC7 and there is no evidence any of them actually suspected the building was brought down by a controlled demolition or that they suspected any coverup or any other fraud by government whatsoever. Sure--if you just ignore reality, you can reason yourself into believing that they were whispering to you exactly what you want to believe, right there in the pages of the NY Times. In any case, it's useful that you cite them in this thread re Hulsey because they are examples of the type of people who are supremely expert in the subject areas in question whom AE911Truth should have consulted with re WTC7 instead of hiring a bridge expert from Alaska.

 

You're right - that will be the last on that theme.

 

I've directly addressed the omitted elements multiple times. Please feel free to provide proper citations re the other "issues" on the list and I will be happy to address them too. When you actually read the NIST report to try to find support for those claims, you will realize Hulsey didn't even correctly characterize the report he was attempting to refute, another red flag re his competence. (HINT--they've already been discussed in this thread)

 

Ummm, but your story was that "NIST was established to take the heat out of public interest..."
Surely professional curiosity about a fire can not be conflated to the public being upset and demanding investigations.
Obviously we did eventually get conspiracy theorists claiming that there was something fishy about
Building 7, but timing is everything, since you say that public outcry led to NIST being "established."

So, I politely request, again, a link to the earliest significant public interest (re. a credible source, of course)
in Building 7 that you say NIST was "established" to respond to. Thanks, again.

 

Just FYI--I purchased a copy of this book and, while it is a very thorough, technical guide to analyzing progressive collapses (as one would expect), and while it does talk extensively about how progressive collapses can happen in steel framed buildings (with reference made to NIST's WTC reports and as models of WTC1 and WTC7 made independently by the author, as well as to partial collapses in the Windsor Tower and Beijing Television Cultural Center), the model of WTC7 as used in the book is contrived for didactic purposes. The model sets an explicitly counterfactual fire on the 17th floor of the building of the building and walks students through how to asses the extent to which such fire would damage structural elements within the building.

Here are some key excerpts from the book:



...



...



...



...


...



...



In any case, I would urge those who have previously been persuaded by AE911Truth's trope re fire being unable to cause the failure of steel buildings to step back and look at the issue again from first principles through the eyes of a disinterested expert on progressive collapses. The book is about $100 (at least in the US) and contains a wealth of knowledge and useful examples, even for those who are not proficient in the software cited.

 

Interesting that the author's diagrams do not cite col 79 but the col line 73 and transfer truss 1... which has always made more sense to me.

 

Yes, it's actually a graphic from an early (circa 2005) NIST slide (which he cites as having been pulled from a conspiracy theory website (http://wtc7.net/nistreport.html) of all places). I'm not sure I'd take his use of the slide as an endorsement of that particular theory over the later NIST theory; I'd guess he was just looking for a diagram of column buckling in WTC7 to illustrate the general point.

 

It is interesting that the authors of that book apparently created a full ABAQUS model of WTC7, and further modeled a hypothetical fire progression.

Hulsey et al might be expected to have reached out to the authors to get and share experiences and recommendations.

 

The draft report is still not out, but it may be released any day now.

At this, time, I want to remind everybody that, when NIST released their drafts (in 2005 for WTC1+2, and 2008 for WTC7) for Public Comments, they subsequently published all comments received, and they are still available today:

The latter contained comments on the WTC7 reports by the following individuals - which I color-coded, showing that the vast majority of submissions came from Truthers:

I marked in red those names I immediately recognize as truthers, and in magenta names who are borderline truthers (Greening), or smell like truthers (pseudonyms). In orange people who seem to be truthers judging by their comments which I just reviewed. Green: Debunkers - people making reference to conspiracy theories and intending to counter them. Black: Too little substance to decide.
Blue: Competent and technically substantive reviews.
A couple of the Truther comments were competent at least to some degree: Anders Björkman and Vesa Raiskila come to mind; their contributions were informed by relevant technical experience, and original.
The vast majority made a fool of themselves.

[...]

 

This schedule all but admits that Hulsey will break another of the promises that AE911Truth made when they solicited money for the study:

AE911Truth Newsletter of Nov 21, 2015

If the study is released in, say, mid-February 2018, followed by a 6-week period for comments from the public, then March 2018 is already over. Give them another month, optimistically, to react to comments and correct, add and modify the paper, and we are at the end of April. There is no chance that any "major peer-reviewed engineering journals" would publish a paper submitted in April already in May or June.

Hence, Hulsey does NOT plan to submit his findings to such a journal.

This is a shame, for in the same Newsletter, Richard Gage very personally asked for lots of money:

 

Long time lurker here. Is it not entirely likely that this delay is a direct result of the harsh criticism he has received here and on the ISF over the many glaring problems his study appears to have which forced him to go back to the drawing (spinning) board?

Is it possible he would have "released" his study (for whatever it was worth disseminated only on youtube videos and CT blogs) long ago had he not been "tipped off" to how embarrassingly inept and incomplete his conclusions were going to be if released as is?

I for one would like to have seen it released to A) watch it fall flat on its face and be largely ignored among the scientific and engineering communities and B) confirm our suspicions that scientific and engineering communities were never the intended audience.

I suspect the study will never be released. Ergo he has failed to come up with a way to spin its results in a way that would fool even die hard CT's into believing its legitimacy.