A virtual model illustrating some aspects of the collapse of the WTC Towers

I suggets the following rule of thumb:

When a computer model output, using Blender or any other, more advanced physics engine, doesn't resemble the real world WTC collapse it's supposed to mimic, then there is something wrong with the model, not with reality.
I.o.w.: If you want to know what it looks like when a 47/110 storey skyscraper collapses due to fire, watch the 9/11/2001 news archives.
Model behaviour will not constitute evidence either way that "Truthers" and "Debunkers" would realistically agree upon, ever.
 
I suggets the following rule of thumb:

When a computer model output, using Blender or any other, more advanced physics engine, doesn't resemble the real world WTC collapse it's supposed to mimic, then there is something wrong with the model, not with reality.
I.o.w.: If you want to know what it looks like when a 47/110 storey skyscraper collapses due to fire, watch the 9/11/2001 news archives.
Model behaviour will not constitute evidence either way that "Truthers" and "Debunkers" would realistically agree upon, ever.
Experimental models don't mimic anything. That is wholly deceptive language. Experimental models seek to investigate reality through the scientific principle of reproducibility. Computer modelling is widely used in industry for its reliability: for example, in aviation, the virtual windtunnel is now a critical part of aircraft design.

I do not think you or Mick would be distancing yourself so rapidly from this little tower collapse experiment if it had produced results that supported your ideas. Can you imagine if I'd used the kind of question-begging argument you've just employed to dismiss the results of a computer modelling effort that did offer evidence to support your theories?
 
Cube Radio,
can you please identify what exactly is wrong in my post, or irrelevant to the debate at hand? Because I strongly disagree with the one explicit refutation;
Of course the entire modelling effort in this thread is done to mimic (=illustrate) aspects of the real WTC collapses.

I repeat: "When a computer model output, using Blender or any other, more advanced physics engine, doesn't resemble the real world WTC collapse it's supposed to mimic, then there is something wrong with the model, not with reality."

When a real aircraft's behaviour in reality differs from that of the computer modelling, then it doesn't matter that the model is "reproducible" or "reliable" - it's wrong then and needs to be either discarded or improved until it does in fact mimick real world behaviour. When it fails to reprouce real world behaviour, it's dangerous and worthless.
The virtual windtunnel is now a critical part of aircraft design because it does reliably mimick the behaviour of the real object. If it didn't, it would not be a critical part of aircraft design.

Same applies with WTC models: If they fail to reproduce the behaviour of the real event (to within an acceptable margin of error), that tells us nothing about the real event. It only tells us that the model is wrong. (It doesn't tell us WHAT is wrong with the model, by the way).
 
I do not think you or Mick would be distancing yourself so rapidly from this little tower collapse experiment if it had produced results that supported your ideas
he hasn't even finished it. and he said so which is why he was asking for input. You guys keep saying it doesn't stand up (the one I downloaded stands up, so I'm confused by this although I might be doing something wrong). Maybe you can spend some time adding the column connections, and birdcage, scaling the columns appropriately so Mick doesn't have to do everything for you.
Then you can post your open source code here and Mick can tweak it for you. Maybe you wouldn't have to manipulate the physics in weird ways if the building was built in full, to scale. (I would even add little weight boxes to simulate the weight of office furniture, water in the sprinkler systems etc.. doesn't have to be exact imo).

I don't care what the physics issues are. There's no logical reason those 2 particular floors that I labeled B - and only those 2 floors- would be the first ones to go. It makes no sense if all the sections were built the same.
 
Ah, the model of a "WTC7-style" internal collapse? I'm sorry, I thought the topic of this thread was
the 60 floor one looks exactly like the other ones. have you looked at them yourself? I cant find a 110 one like aka has in his video.
 


The biggest problem with this is that it has no resemblance to the actual events of 9/11. Both towers leaned as the upper sections collapsed, meaning that when they impacted the lower sections, they did not impact the support columns. Ergo, the failure points on the lower sections were the floor-to-column connections. (See illustration.) The model serves mainly to illustrate that even under the best conditions, total collapse occurs anyway.
@aka has conducted a comprehensive analysis of Mick's models so far. Perhaps the most interesting (in terms of visual resemblance at least) is this one:



Further details in the Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/towerchall...adebunk_a_review_of_mick_wests_virtual_model/
 

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The best part about modeling the WTC collapse, we have the gravity collapse of WTC 1 and 2, full up real models, to grade visuals of the models we make. What would the gravity collapse of the WTC towers look like; they look exactly as they did. The WTC towers are a shell, core, and floors; a system which created a building which was strong, could stop airplane impacts below 250 knots, which unlike the ESB which was breached with a small 18 pounds of TNT kinetic energy impact. Do we have to model these things?

Can a model look at the weakness of the WTC, a floor fails at the connections to the core and shell when overloaded past 29,000,000 pounds. This is the weak point, the floors only hold up themselves, not the upper floors. WTC floors are hanging on the core and shell. Thus any model of the WTC which has more than 12 floors collapsing and coming to rest, fails because the lower floors can't hold the 12 floors of mass. Any model which is based on 9/11, if it stops collapsing, fails to model the gravity collapse of the WTC, because the floor core and shell connections can't hold up 12 floors of debris.

Can I move the goalposts for the theme of this thread if the "model" fails to stop a plane going 180 mph?
 
That seems a little odd, because his WTC1 collapse simulation seems pretty similar to the actual collapse.

20170415-071926-vv082.jpg

20170415-071844-g604l.jpg

How do they say it differs? And would that difference be anything that I should look into in my own (much simpler) model?

I think the main thing that you are not modeling is the air pressure pushing the walls out. Your walls are falling in on themselves but if you looked at the time to fall one level, and the amount f air that was pushed out you are getting wind speeds of >200mph and massive pressures, that increase with the speed of the fall. You could model this by an external force to the perimeter structure that varied with height.
 
That seems a little odd, because his WTC1 collapse simulation seems pretty similar to the actual collapse.

20170415-071926-vv082.jpg

20170415-071844-g604l.jpg

How do they say it differs? And would that difference be anything that I should look into in my own (much simpler) model?
Kostack Studio will be releasing a new video detailing the twin tower impacts and collapse at some point if this teaser is correct

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsQrsN3mIU


It will be interesting to see how he models the impacts if he models the collapse of the towers down to the below grade steel structure making up the foundation of the plaza, as included in the teaser video is a depiction of the below grade steel supporting the plaza around the towers.
 
Kostack Studio will be releasing a new video detailing the twin tower impacts and collapse at some point if this teaser is correct

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsQrsN3mIU

Details about how the models from Kostack Studio are progressing are available on the community section of his channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/KaiKostack/community

So far he's been modeling the hat truss, impact of tower collapse debris with ground level, structural models of the other, shorter WTC buildings on the main 16 acre WTC site, simulation of debris damage from the south tower collapse prior to the north tower collapse, and simulated initial plane impact damage to the south tower.

Additionally found this video from another channel that attempts to replicate the initial damage from the airplane impact into one of the world trade center towers:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55EYLi4tuqw


The video description says the model had a scale of 1:500. Not certain if this was a conspiracy theory video or not, however the results at the end of the video show a similar impact damage pattern (although lack of impact void holes and more on the order of bent steel rods) on the scale model, with the statement

"We say it is impossible to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of the damage of 9/11 in a single model. Can you prove us wrong?"
 
The video description says the model had a scale of 1:500. Not certain if this was a conspiracy theory video or not, however the results at the end of the video show a similar impact damage pattern (although lack of impact void holes and more on the order of bent steel rods) on the scale model, with the statement

"We say it is impossible to reconstruct a comprehensive picture of the damage of 9/11 in a single model. Can you prove us wrong?"
Looks like a Truther video to me. An impressive amount of work, but fails to account for scale (as it’s impossible at that size)
 
Looks like a Truther video to me. An impressive amount of work, but fails to account for scale (as it’s impossible at that size)
For starters:
Scale 1:500 means the volume of the model is 1/500^3 = 1/125,000,000 that of original.
The original had a mass of roundabout 300,000,000 kg, so model mass should be 300,000,000/125,000,000 kg = 2.4 kg.
At 0:16, we learn it is 11.4 kg. Too massive by a factor of almost 5.

Kinetic energy of model at 0.03 kg, 90.5 m/s (values at 1:07 min) is 123 J.
Kinetic energy of original Flight AA11 at 120,660 kg, 208 m/s was 260,000,000 J - Factor of 2 million = 500 x 500 x 8.
I am not sure what it should be to be to scale - my sense is that both the impacted area / projection of that energy onto wall and the strength of the wall elements / cross-section or columns and spandrels scale with the square of scale, i.e. factor 250,000

So kinetic energy of model plane is too low by a factor of 8, while the structure is too massive by a factor of 5. This makes for a scaling error of factor 40.

(It is of course also wrong to model the floors as metal plates, which will behave a lot different from light-weight concrete slabs with relatively flimsy open web trusses. And gravity should also be scaled and probably be 500x higher. Plus more problems)
 
For starters:
Scale 1:500 means the volume of the model is 1/500^3 = 1/125,000,000 that of original.
The original had a mass of roundabout 300,000,000 kg, so model mass should be 300,000,000/125,000,000 kg = 2.4 kg.
At 0:16, we learn it is 11.4 kg. Too massive by a factor of almost 5.

Kinetic energy of model at 0.03 kg, 90.5 m/s (values at 1:07 min) is 123 J.
Kinetic energy of original Flight AA11 at 120,660 kg, 208 m/s was 260,000,000 J - Factor of 2 million = 500 x 500 x 8.
I am not sure what it should be to be to scale - my sense is that both the impacted area / projection of that energy onto wall and the strength of the wall elements / cross-section or columns and spandrels scale with the square of scale, i.e. factor 250,000

So kinetic energy of model plane is too low by a factor of 8, while the structure is too massive by a factor of 5. This makes for a scaling error of factor 40.

(It is of course also wrong to model the floors as metal plates, which will behave a lot different from light-weight concrete slabs with relatively flimsy open web trusses. And gravity should also be scaled and probably be 500x higher. Plus more problems)
Agreed that the kinetic energy of the model plane being too low, the mass of the structure being too high and modeling the floors as rigid metal plates instead of open web trusses all make the model scale poorly.

However, why should the gravity be scaled and approximately 500x higher? Is it in part because of the lower height of the model structure compared to the original?
 
If you have an accurately scaled support beam, the free length of the beam scales 1/500, the cross-section scales 1/250,000, and the load on it scales 1/125,000,000. Comparatively speaking, that's like extending the beam by ×500 but reducing its weight to 0.2% while keeping it at the same strength.

Obviously, that's not going to be a very realistic model.
 
However, why should the gravity be scaled and approximately 500x higher? Is it in part because of the lower height of the model structure compared to the original?
That's part of the reason, and it would be particularly important if subsequently collapse progression were to be modeled, as the original has 500 times as much vertical distance to pick up kinetic energy before running into the next bit of resistence, such as the floor slab below. To make up for that, increasing gravitational acceleration is a solution.
In context, as structural strength increases with the 2nd power (cross-section), but gravitational load with the 3rd power, compressive strain on the columns is very much too low in the model. I am not engineer and not the tools to analyze this, but suspect that behavior in response to dynamic lateral load is not independent of vertical load.
Then again, I also don't know if stress:strain ratio is correct in the model and would be very wrong if you apply 500x gravity - or vice versa.

It all comes down to it not really being possible to model all aspects of the WTC events with one model in one go: Each aspect would require its own model.

For example: They show the amount of fuel to scale - obviously an attempt to ridicule the idea that 10,000 gallons of fuel are enough to start such large fires. But you can't model the fuel distribution, fireball and subsequent burning of left-over fuel to scale with a tea-spoon of fuel due to volume-surface ratios being all wrong in every stage of the fuel-fire event: Any pools of fuel, to scale, would burn out 500 times too soon. The tea-spoon-full could never disperse into enough droplets, unless you somehow managed to make the droplets much much smaller, in which case, again, they'd burn too fast. Perhaps you'd be better off with 500x the amount of fuel, albeit one that's 500 times less energetic (specific heat) - in which case it would be nearly impossible to ignite it and have it continue burning on air.
 
Kostack Studio will be releasing a new video detailing the twin tower impacts and collapse at some point if this teaser is correct

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbsQrsN3mIU


It will be interesting to see how he models the impacts if he models the collapse of the towers down to the below grade steel structure making up the foundation of the plaza, as included in the teaser video is a depiction of the below grade steel supporting the plaza around the towers.

A video by Kostack Studio showing details from both collapses from various angles is still underway and almost finished, according to this recent update

Description in recent update from June 2022

WTC 2 comparison test. However, it is not yet clear whether comparisons with original footage will be part of the final video, as there is hardly anything to be seen in the dense smoke and dust anyway.

Comment by Kostack Studio from July 25, 2022

would say 98% of the job is done. All problems are solved, all bugs fixed, now it's just a matter of fine-tuning the details. I hope it will only take weeks now and not months anymore.

An interesting discussion in the comments too about how a lot of destruction starts to happen after 3 to 5 seconds in the simulation and not right away
Comment by Davis Pounds
@Kostack Studio When tower 2 collapsed, the upper eastern face, (likely between 75th floor & the roof crowning) and likely others began to fold and break apart. This happened likely a 3-5 seconds into the collapse. Very few pictures exist unfortunately because most of the dust from the explosion had already encompassed the falling section of tower. Other question: what original plans are you using for the development? I have most structural plans for both towers, and some for 6wtc & 7wtc

Comment by Kostack Studio
@Davis Pounds After 3-5 seconds a lot of destruction starts to happen also in the simulation, we'll see how it will unfold. I have all the plans that got released into public in the past, and that's a lot.
 
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