AE911 Truth's WTC7 Evaluation Computer Modelling Project

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I'm happy to let your grumpy ramblings stand as your response to my specific points, but I don't consider them actually responsive (and nor, I suspect, would anyone who actually follows this dialogue).

No disrespect benthamitemetric, but I've been following this dialogue very closely, and I'm afraid to me it's clear Tony is talking sense.

I am sure you are sincere in your beliefs but I wonder if you have lost sight of the big picture here. You are not obliged to defend the official 9/11 story. I think your moral obligation extends only to the defence truth. Are you sure you are really being truthful?
 
Invalid? All of it? Of just the bit where A2001 was pushed off the seat?

And for any part of the the NIST report to be shown to be invalid, does it not require that Hulsey's report be A) published, and B) shown to be valid?

Mick, I think you're right here. Until the full report is published, with total transparancy, and peer reviewed, one might object that no matter how condfidently Hulsey advances his findings, we can do no more than take his word for what he says.

As you rightly point out this is clear. However, the same is also equally clear about NIST's report. I wonder that you were not more critical of NIST.
 
I just want to explain why it is extremely difficult for a steel framed high-rise building to collapse due to fire.

First, the columns will not get very hot as they have a heat transfer path to cooler areas. Second, steel frames are built with factors of safety and it is difficult to heat large structural members to the point where there is no safety margin left with the limited fuel in an office fire in any given space. A building may have a fire for a significant time with the fire traveling through it but that heat can only be applied in any given local area for a relatively short time, as the fires run out of fuel in local areas and burn out in an hour or so in a given area.

Since the columns must fail to have a collapse, the only way to have that happen is for the horizontal members to somehow dislodge and remove their lateral support over a significant number of stories for the columns. This is what NIST, ARUP, and Weidlinger all tried to show happened.

NIST failed to do so, as [we feel] their model ignores and omits items that would prevent this dislodgement such as column side plates, girder web stiffeners, and lateral support beams. In addition, their model prevents deflection of the exterior due to thermal expansion of the horizontal members causing all of that deflection to move in one direction towards the column they say collapsed. For some here to say their model was high fidelity is a travesty when it is realized they ignored or left out pertinent structural features to try and accomplish the horizontal dislodgement. In reality, with those features included the NIST WTC 7 report claim is impossible.

ARUP had a fatal error in trying to show the falling girder would break through the next floor down. They used an infinite stiffness for the falling girder and claimed an enormous and fictional impact load. When the correct stiffness is applied they fall far short of the load required to break through the next floor down.

Wedilinger acknowledges that ARUP can't break through the next floor down and then goes on to say that in another location the fires superheated the steel on two contiguous floors with the top one failing and falling on the lower and finally getting enough momentum to continue propagation with two floors falling. Of course, they have not publicly released the thermal analysis they claim shows these extreme steel temperatures.

In his presentation Dr. Hulsey mentions that if the columns can't be compromised by heat directly then it can only be horizontal dislodgement which could cause a failure of the columns. It seems that he looked for horizontal dislodgement by analyzing the floor frame and slabs in composite, partially composite, and non-composite situations and could find no instance where the horizontal members would adversely affect the columns to the point of collapse. That would be why he felt he could make the statement that fire could not have caused the collapse of the building.
 
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I just want to explain why it is extremely difficult for a steel framed high-rise building to collapse due to fire.

First, the columns will not get very hot as they have a heat transfer path to cooler areas. Second, steel frames are built with factors of safety and it is difficult to heat large structural members to the point where there is no safety margin left with the limited fuel in an office fire in any given space. A building may have a fire for a significant time with the fire traveling through it but that heat can only be applied in any given local area for a relatively short time, as the fires run out of fuel in local areas and burn out in an hour or so in a given area.

Since the columns must fail to have a collapse, the only way to have that happen is for the horizontal members to somehow dislodge and remove their lateral support over a significant number of stories for the columns. This is what NIST, ARUP, and Weidlinger all tried to show happened.

NIST failed to do so, as [we feel] their model ignores and omits items that would prevent this dislodgement. For some here to say their model was high fidelity is a travesty when it is realized they ignored or left out pertinent structural features to try and accomplish the horizontal dislodgement. In reality, with those features included the NIST WTC 7 report claim is impossible.

[We feel] ARUP had a fatal error in trying to show the falling girder would break through the next floor down. They used an infinite stiffness for the falling girder and claimed an enormous and fictional impact load. When the correct stiffness is applied they fall far short of the load required to break through the next floor down.

Wedilinger acknowledges that ARUP can't break through the next floor down and then goes on to say that in another location the fires superheated the steel on two contiguous floors with the top one failing and falling on the lower and finally getting enough momentum to continue propagation with two floors falling. Of course, they have not publicly released the thermal analysis they claim shows these extreme steel temperatures.

In his presentation Dr. Hulsey mentions that if the columns can't be compromised by heat directly then it can only be horizontal dislodgement which could cause a failure of the columns. It seems that he looked for horizontal dislodgement by analyzing the floor frame and slabs in composite, partially composite, and non-composite situations and could find no instance where the horizontal members would adversely affect the columns to the point of collapse. That would be why he felt he could make the statement that fire could not have caused the collapse of the building.


Tony, nice try but some flawed thinking here. First you must consider the very unorthodox structure of these WTC buildings. We can SEE in the case of the twin towers regardless of what was the proximate cause... once the mass of 15 to 30 floors was disengaged from the structural matrix and axial load paths it dropped... at whatever rate / speed and EASILY overwhelmed the floor system it came down on. The columns were as result left with no lateral support and even stone cold were too unstable to stand.... and so they collapsed as well....

7wtc collapse at some point must be laid on the Rube Goldberg structure of transfers required to build a 40 story tower over a massive power sub station. Unlike many towers 7 had thousands of gallons of fuel stored much of it in the load transfer structure region.

We see 7 come down from some sort of failure low down in the structure. And there were many peculiar aspects of the structure BELOW the often discusses floor 13. The 40 story tower has 57 columns above the transfers... and below it only 27. Not only that the perimeter above was support at the ground by trusses and sloped columns on the east and west and on cantilevers on the north side. All these massive transfers were linked in a massive east west girder at the north side of core.

But the one thing I will agree with ALL the "studies" is that the collapse was the result of CONNECTION or node failures. NIST seems to find column 79 flr 13 the culprit. Not impressed. But their theory is once the floor mass in that NE quadrant has no support it plunged down taking out the transfers below and much of the columns above lost axial support and the tower collapsed.

Another scenario was the FEMA one which envisioned (correctly I believe) that the site fabricated trusses failed at their bolted connections. And once just one diagonal of one of those trusses fail... the building is toast.

All three towers collapsed from heat related causes because their DESIGNS did not have the ability to resist. YES the twins were destroyed by the mass of the top "blocks"... because it was the FLOOR structural systems designed for (less than) typical office FLOOR live loads.... not collapsing multiple floor dynamic loads. You can understand this.

There was no evidence supporting explosive destruction.... no steel found that looked suspicious... Nano thermite is a fishing expedition and makes no sense nor is there any evidence of structure attacked by nano thermite found on the debris pile.

Steel was not explosively "hurled" hundreds of feet (or 600' Gage claims) from the twins.... the steel toppled away and that's what the pattern of the debris shows.

Tony on the macro level the collapses are easily understood and there is no reason to suspect anything other than the obvious.
 
Interesting that the girder in question does not extend to the column, but rests on a beating plate. Where is the information about the distance from the end of the girder to the column? It appears that the side plates would not restrain it. Look at page 55
 
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/9114-pdf.28807/
From this thread 2 pages ago.

Page 55 shows what NIST should have done in terms of their analysis for the C79 connection. Do you prefer the way this connection is modelled in the UAF study as compared to NISTs ?
I do. I believe UAF is a far more structurally accurate representation of the drawings available. I don't think that it is reasonable to argue that it isn't.
 
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/9114-pdf.28807/
From this thread 2 pages ago.

Page 55 shows what NIST should have done in terms of their analysis for the C79 connection. Do you prefer the way this connection is modelled in the UAF study as compared to NISTs ?
I do. I believe UAF is a far more structurally accurate representation of the drawings available. I don't think that it is reasonable to argue that it isn't.

I don't know that it matters... No steel is fabricated without clearance to get the beam in place. It looks to me that the detail would allow for the beam to move laterally and the partial stiffeners and the column end plates would not inhibit this movement.

But there are other reasons that this sort of focus on one connection can prove nothing one way or the other..... speculation is all that you have.
 
From the above drawing
I don't know that it matters... No steel is fabricated without clearance to get the beam in place. It looks to me that the detail would allow for the beam to move laterally and the partial stiffeners and the column end plates would not inhibit this movement.

But there are other reasons that this sort of focus on one connection can prove nothing one way or the other..... speculation is all that you have.

The project has focused on the whole building in a far more detailed and accurate way than NIST did. And has focused on the connection to around the same degree as NIST did, and in challenging NIST's results it would seem fair to scrutinise the structural areas that they chose to focus in on for their hypothesis to a similar degree.
You can see the 3/4" call out on the bottom left diagram for the connection. The stiffener plates are 3/4", so it is clear from this alone that the stiffener plate on the Eastern flange is already trapped before the girder itself undergoes any expansion. The movement to the East rather than the West is the real issue now. As you can see this presents a whole new set of problems for the whole thermal expansion theory, in that the East side lower flange of the C79-44 girder would have to somehow un-trap itself from the sideplate on C79.
These figures for movement experienced by the key elements involved in NIST's hypothesis are very high in comparison to the UAF studies, and this is the case for both programs independently when the building is modelled to a higher degree of accuracy and detail. I would like someone to point me to a MORE detailed FEA model of a high rise steel framed building if they can.
 
No disrespect benthamitemetric, but I've been following this dialogue very closely, and I'm afraid to me it's clear Tony is talking sense.

I am sure you are sincere in your beliefs but I wonder if you have lost sight of the big picture here. You are not obliged to defend the official 9/11 story. I think your moral obligation extends only to the defence truth. Are you sure you are really being truthful?

That's not any better of a response to the specific points I raised to Tony than Tony was able to muster.
 
Just a reminder: please keep public conversation polite, and avoid the perception of insulting people (even if that is not your intent). I will remove people from the thread if it degenerates into a shouting match.
 
Regarding peer review. What is this going to consist of? It would seem difficult for a typical academic peer-reviewer to verify the models. Would it be a more professional (but expensive) review, like these:

https://www.astcad.com.au/structural-design/peer-review-services/
Australian Design & Drafting Services offers competitive and reliable peer review services for analysis and design performed by others. The process for doing this involves the structural model verification with the results produced by others or by performing an independent structural and design analysis, as per clients requirements rendering their specific needs.
Content from External Source
http://www.forell.com/peer-review/

  • Review of analysis results. This may require implementation of one or more parallel verification models for comparison purposes
Content from External Source
http://www.pegroup.com/peer-review.html
PEGroup Consulting Engineers, Inc. provides services for an objective, third party peer review of the project construction and engineering documents prepared by others. These documents are reviewed for structural engineering design, calculations, questions and conflicts from the building department, adherence to applicable building codes, conflicts between specifications and drawings, and disputes.
Content from External Source
And looking at these engineering groups, with all due respect to Professor Hulsey and his two students, was that really the best use of AE911's $316K? It would seem that engaging an experienced group of engineers would have given much more professional results in a much shorter time.
 
What level of peer review would satisfy you ? That NIST got this connection horribly wrong was a given up until now, but we know what difference remedying these errors and omissions has made to the UAF analysis. Two separate analysis of the same building have shown the girder to be displaced in a way that should make anyone with a passing interest in this issue sit up, take notice and give this study the scrutiny it warrants. NIST peer reviewed their own report, perhaps we should ask them to peer review this one. It would be enlightening to hear them share their thoughts on it I am sure.
 
What level of peer review would satisfy you ?

I don't thinking there's a practical limit. Ideally I'd like two different teams replicate the findings independently. However I'd be reasonably satisfied with a review of the conclusions and recommendations by multiple independent professionals. i.e. what's the significance of these differences? Does it indicate that something other than fire and debris damage was involved? How much of the NIST report, is invalidated? What investigation needs to be done, and why?
(those are questions for a peer reviewer, not for you)
 
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Mick, I am not going to play semantics with you. I think Leroy Hulsey has ...
This is not semantics - this is the heart, core and key of what AE911Truth gets out of Hulsey. That Hulsey claimed very directly that he proved that WTC7 could not have collapsed due to fire, period.

Is that an assertion validly concluded by Hulsey from his study and amplified by AE, or is it an invalid conjecture? You're laboured non-answer sounds a LOT like you agree that Hulsey and AE are talking out of their arses, and I will understand and quote you to that effect if you can't muster the adult courage to simply answer the question.
 
I don;t thinking there's a practical limit. Ideally I'd like two different teams replicate the findings independently. However I'd be reasonably satisfied with a review of the conclusions and recommendations by multiple independent professionals. i.e. what's the significance of these differences? Does it indicate that something other than fire and debris damage was involved? How much of the NIST report, is invalidated? What investigation needs to be done, and why?
(those are questions for a peer reviewer, not for you)

NIST are invalidated on two levels. Firstly with their assumptions, errors and omissions in the elements that actually did make up the connection they were modelling most closely, and secondly in their estimation of the connection when subjected to their own stated conditions. So they should respond to the following at least.
The stiffeners.
The side plates.
The direction of travel of the girder wrt the seat plate.
The outer connection assumption of infinitely rigid walls.
The 3 beams that hold the north most beam of the eastern floor beams that frame into the girder.
Floor modelling, or lack thereof.

That would do for a start, and if a private business's report into such a huge event was being called into question like this they would be expected to respond, and reasonably so. Why not NIST ?
Surely it has potential to "jeopardise public safety" for them not to.
 
Let's address Tony's point's one by one:

I just want to explain why it is extremely difficult for a steel framed high-rise building to collapse due to fire.

First, the columns will not get very hot as they have a heat transfer path to cooler areas.

We have a good idea of the column temperatures from actual modeling, not from your bare assertions. This bare assertion adds nothing to the discussion. There is no significant disagreement over the column temperatures in any of the models.

Second, steel frames are built with factors of safety and it is difficult to heat large structural members to the point where there is no safety margin left with the limited fuel in an office fire in any given space.

Difficult != impossible. Pre-9/11, steel framed buildings were built with purely prescriptive fire abatement systems (insulation, sprinklers, etc.) based on the size of the individual building elements. After 9/11, in response to the NIST reports, the ICC adopted (see also here specifically re disproportionate collapse changes) and many localities (including NYC) also adopted amended codes so that buildings needed to (among many other things) also take the design of the building into account by factoring in the prevention of potential disproportionate collapse scenarios as well. This change was in direct response to the people who are most expert in the world on the subjects of fire science and the engineering of tall buildings to reviewing the NIST reports and related materials and recognizing there existed real potential vulnerabilities in these building under certain circumstances. (None of the people who actually do real work in this area as actual experts are members of AE911Truth, by the way.)

A building may have a fire for a significant time with the fire traveling through it but that heat can only be applied in any given local area for a relatively short time, as the fires run out of fuel in local areas and burn out in an hour or so in a given area.

How long exactly, Tony? The last time you brought up the fire models, you advocated an indefensibly short period based on a patently flawed paper from Robert Korol (which model erroneously omits preheating and truncates the direct heating period without any basis). You have never actually defended that clearly flawed analysis or otherwise explained exactly how long the heating should be. As you know, NIST, which did not attempt to model the most extreme fire scenarios possible, found significant local heating over periods in excess of 4 hours in many places. You are not making an actual specific claim here; you are merely trying to poison the well.

Since the columns must fail to have a collapse, the only way to have that happen is for the horizontal members to somehow dislodge and remove their lateral support over a significant number of stories for the columns. This is what NIST, ARUP, and Weidlinger all tried to show happened.

Correction: this is what NIST, Arup and WAI demonstrated could happen in a variety of ways in a variety of reasonable scenarios that are consistent with the conditions of the building observed that day.

NIST failed to do so, as [we feel] their model ignores and omits items that would prevent this dislodgement such as column side plates, girder web stiffeners, and lateral support beams. In addition, their model prevents deflection of the exterior due to thermal expansion of the horizontal members causing all of that deflection to move in one direction towards the column they say collapsed. For some here to say their model was high fidelity is a travesty when it is realized they ignored or left out pertinent structural features to try and accomplish the horizontal dislodgement. In reality, with those features included the NIST WTC 7 report claim is impossible.

The specific points you bring up re potential inaccuracies in NIST's model that may have added error to its calculations are all fair points and can be subject to further debate an analysis. But the degree to which correcting for them would have altered the outcome in NIST's analysis is dependent upon many other factors as well, including--first and foremost--their actual heating model, which was extremely detailed and included a variable progression across the entire building, from which NIST modeled fire damage on 16 floors simultaneously. The damage NIST modeled was path dependent. Yes, elements near to each other all reached relatively similar temperatures at some point as a general matter, but in NIST"s model, they reached their temperatures individually in a certain predetermined sequence over the course of six hours. Hulsey did not apply such a heat model. As far as we can tell, all he did was take the a snapshot of the NIST temperatures at 6:00 pm and apply them to each element as if they were the maximum temperatures such elements reached. But that's not accurate. Many elements had already been heated more extensively and started cooling at that point, while many other elements would still yet be heated more prior to the collapse. Moreover, Hulsey only modeled two floors and, on those two floors, the portions of the floors he modeled fire damage were smaller than portions of the 16 floors on which NIST modeled fire damage. These limitations (along with other modeling and software differences) of Hulsey's model make it impossible for him to claim his structural revisions were implemented in a controlled way such that we can conclude that those structural changes, and not the limitations, were the cause of the discrepancy in outcomes as between Hulsey's model and NIST's.

Moreover, it is worth noting again that, in any event, NIST's model only showed one way (the way NIST through most probable) that fire could have caused the collapse of the building. Even if NIST was mistaken about that, it does not mean that collapse mode didn't occur under fire conditions different than what NIST modeled, or that any other collapse mode could not have occurred. This is pure, basic, obvious logic that should not even to be stated, but somehow it is completely lost as you, AE911Truth and Hulsey insist on being dishonest about the scope of his findings.

ARUP had a fatal error in trying to show the falling girder would break through the next floor down. They used an infinite stiffness for the falling girder and claimed an enormous and fictional impact load. When the correct stiffness is applied they fall far short of the load required to break through the next floor down.

Tony, I already corrected you three times on this in this very thread. Arup did not do floor collapse propagation calculations. Arup found multiple ways in which the girder could become unseated in heating and cooling scenarios (which were confirmed by WAI). These ways were completely independent of NIST's findings and demonstrate that the girders around column 79 could have failed. Nordenson, who retained Arup to do the girder failure models, then did hand calculations about floor collapse propagation, which hand calculations were explicitly conservative and assumed the floor beneath the collapsing floor was in pristine condition. Of course, Nordenson also made an error re the stiffness of the falling floor, which error we've discussed ad nauseum and which WAI acknowledged and corrected for (more on that below). That error does not have any bearing on Arup's failure calculations, NIST's failure or collapse propagation models, or WAI's failure or collapse propagation models. Moreover, that error does not have any bearing on any scenario not modeled by Nordenson, including scenarios in which the lower floor is not conservatively (and unrealistically, in the case of WTC7) assumed to be pristine amid raging fires for hours.

Wedilinger acknowledges that ARUP can't break through the next floor down and then goes on to say that in another location the fires superheated the steel on two contiguous floors with the top one failing and falling on the lower and finally getting enough momentum to continue propagation with two floors falling. Of course, they have not publicly released the thermal analysis they claim shows these extreme steel temperatures.

WAI corrected for Nordenson's error and found that, if recalculated correcting for stiffness while still accepting Nordenson's conservative assumptions re the condition of the lower floor, then the collapse would not propagate. That was it. That was the end of their direct analysis of Nordenson's hand calculations. But, as you know, WAI also ran a full collapse model and found, via such model, that in the scenario they tested, floor collapses would propagate from the girder failure they identified as initially failing. This model does not rule out any other model, except to the extent WAI's assumed conditions were actually more correct than the assumed conditions of the other models. And, again, your claims re extreme steel temperatures in WAI's study are purely speculative and an attempt to dismissive out of hand something you can't otherwise argue against. And it is worth noting that WAI's report does not conclude that similar failures wouldn't have occurred at lower temperatures; it just details the collapse scenario they thought most likely given the fire scenario they thought most likely. Plus, I have demonstrated to you elsewhere that WAI's temperatures were consistent with the temperatures reached in the Cardington studies on steel failures in fire (the same post as cited above includes the Cardington beam steel temp graphs).

In his presentation Dr. Hulsey mentions that if the columns can't be compromised by heat directly then it can only be horizontal dislodgement which could cause a failure of the columns. It seems that he looked for horizontal dislodgement by analyzing the floor frame and slabs in composite, partially composite, and non-composite situations and could find no instance where the horizontal members would adversely affect the columns to the point of collapse. That would be why he felt he could make the statement that fire could not have caused the collapse of the building.

Hulsey did not look very hard for girder dislodgement. In fact, he ignored every scenario tested in which girder dislodgement was found to have been possible, except for one, and he did not even model that one scenario under a very rigorous temperature model. Moreover, he did not attempt to model any scenarios that have not yet been modeled to date. His conclusion that the building could not have collapsed from fire is does not at all follow from the work he has done to date. Even if he had done his one model perfectly, his conclusion would still be unsupported. There is no way around this. Why can't you just admit that?
 
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...nature of the collapse (simultaneous free fall of all four corners) with no asymmetric exterior column deformation in separate parts of the building is evidence that asymmetric fires were not the cause.
I realize you are trollung us by moving goal posts quickly up, down and off the field (the goal posts are the Hulsey study, and so you can legitimately bring up things that Hulsey has presented so far - which is FAR far less than promised at MONEY collection time, since AE911Truth completely failed to keep the public or even those who signed up for the poject updated on the progress - a catastrophic fauilure of truss that so far all truthers, including you, seem to be perfectly fine with), but this talk of "symmetry" and "asymmetric" stuff has always boggled me.

You talk about this as if it were a technical or even a scientific concept, but so far no one has been able to provide me with even just a technical or scientific definition of "symmetry", let alone procedures to determine, measure, quantify and compare levels of "symmetricness" such that a valid comparison can be stated: "The collapse was more symmetric/less asymmetric than theory A can explain". To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever actually measured, quantified or at least categorized the "symmetry" of that particular collapse.

Can you help me by linking to the study that determined the thing you claimed in your post? Or at least cite some article, technical dictionary or textbook that elucidates on the concept of "symmetry of building collapses"? Thank you.

Alternatively, you could admit that this is merely an aestheitic concept played out in the imagination of Truthers who are properly biased into seeing only things that fit their prejudices.
 
You can contact Leroy Hulsey yourself and tell him what you think should be done. You have already contacted his graduate students separately, so it is obviously something you know how to do.
We did that early in the project, when there was a promise attached to the solicitation for MONEY that people can sign up with the study do FOLLOW and GIVE INPUT.

Those promises were BROKEN by Hulsey and AE911Truth.
You, and all of trutherdom (i.e. a small and dispersed group of folks) seems to be perfectly okay with having those promises broken.

What I am saying: I was willing to follow and give input, but was 100% ignored.
To suggest now that we could address Hulsey and not be ignored is cynicism.
 
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The reason large steel framed buildings never failed due to office fires in them is that there is not enough fuel to heat the large steel members to the point where there would be a problem.
The TU Delft building of the architecture faculty collapsed due to fire.
The steel-frame portion of the Windsor building in Madrid collapsed due to fire.
The Plasco building in Teheran collapsed completely from fire.
Late last year, a cooky factory in my home town collapsed partially (the steel-frame part) from a fire.

So your insinuation that there is some magic that totally protects any and all steel-frame highrises from fires is disproven by reality many times over.

WTC1 collapsed from fire.
WTC2 collapsed from fire.
WTC7 collapsed from fire.

Mere denial and appeal to magic don't make those facts go away.


Leroy Hulsey is quoted by AE911Truth as concluding that his study "proved" that WTC7 "did not" collapse from fire.
Is that a valid conclusion from the study - yes or no? Or did you all arrive at it by assuming a-priori that the fuels in such buildings contain too little heat? In that case, the study was a waste of 3 years and $316,000, right? On par of a 3-year, 300K study to show that the moon is not made of green cheese.
 
I am saying that he showed the NIST report is invalid and that we don't have a valid explanation for the collapse. You seemed to agree but want to parse what should be redone.
No, you misrepresent what Mick asked.

Mick asked: "[Hulsey] said that WTC7 did not collapse doe to fire. However his study does not prove this. ... So are you okay with AE911 claiming that?"
The question is whether you, Tony Szamboti, are okay with AE911Truth making a false claim publicly in their headlines.

This is a matter of your, Tony Szamboti's, personal credibility at this point. You cannot very well accuse NIST of dishonesty if at the same time you allow your own organization to lie boldly in their central headline about the very topic we are currently debating - the Hulsey study.
 
You obviously want to walk away from the fact that Leroy Hulsey showed the NIST WTC 7 report is invalid and that we do not have a legitimate explanation for the collapse of the building?...
But that's not how the headline reads.

The headline says: "new study shows it was impossible that the third tower collapsed from fire".

This is the published core of the study today as we speak. Mick West showed you facsimiles of AE911Truth's own pronouncements and even of a newspaper parroting the same.

So at this point in time, you need to address whether what AE911truth, your organization, claimes there, in direct, unambiguous speech, is true or not.

For let's not forget the thread you are posting in - the title is: "AE911 Truth's WTC7 Evaluation Computer Modelling Project"
Do you notice that it starts with and contains "AE911Truth", but not "NIST" not even "Hulsey"? So what AE911Truth makes of this study today is of immediate and upmost relevance now.

Please give a straight and honest answer: Does this claim, which AE911Truth promotes publicly: ""WTC 7 Did Not Collapse from Fire" - Dr. Leroy Hulsey, UAF, Sept. 6, 2017" follow from the study - YES or NO?

As this is the propagandistic core and the ultimate reason why AE spend 300K on the study, so they would be able to make that claim, you must have an opinion on this.
 
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At 57 minutes into the video Hulsey briefly describes the micro/macro modelling of a couple of connectors

Source: https://youtu.be/NJAWl8unZeA?t=56m0s


On slide 59:
20170911-084656-00mks.jpg

This appear to be showing a vertical (down) displacement of the C79/A2001
20170911-094318-vodq0.jpg

This just strikes me as a rather odd choice, as that's by far the strongest direction. Obviously they would have done the other directions and rotations as well, but I would be very interested to see all of them - and there's no reason they would not have fitted on one slide. What does actual connection failure look like in Hulsey's model?

Edit - I imagine the above image is at the point of failure for vertical displacement?
 
I just want to explain why it is extremely difficult for a steel framed high-rise building to collapse due to fire....
Difficult: yes.
Impossible: No.

Many steel-framed have collapsed from fire.

WTC7 was on fire
WTC7 collapsed.
This is a fact of reality that you must figure into your argument.
If you had put the a-priori likelihood of WTC7 collapsing from a hypothetical fire very low, you'd probably had good cause for that.
But as with winning the lottery: Once you actually already HAVE won the lottery, it doesn't matter in the slghtest how unlikely that was.

Hence you (and Hulsey, and AE911Truth) must seek to claim NOT that "it is extremely difficult for a steel framed high-rise building to collapse due to fire", but indeed that it is "impossible".

And so that is what DailyMail.com claimed - and AE911Truth happily put on their homepage, attributing it as a quote to Hulsey.

And now you:
  • Is it generally IMPOSSIBLE for any and all steel frame highrises, present or future, to collapse from fire?
  • Or was it only IMPOSSIBLE specifically for WTC7 due to some properties that distinguish it from other steel-frame highrises that can collapse (even if the a-priori likelihood in each case may be very low)? Then you'd have to point a finger to those distinguishing features.
  • Or would you not rather concede that the claim of impossibility is plain WRONG?


(Logically, the first option would be equivalent to claiming it is even impossible to design a highrise such that it can collapse from fire!)
 
Regarding peer review. What is this going to consist of? It would seem difficult for a typical academic peer-reviewer to verify the models. Would it be a more professional (but expensive) review, like these:

...

And looking at these engineering groups, with all due respect to Professor Hulsey and his two students, was that really the best use of AE911's $316K? It would seem that engaging an experienced group of engineers would have given much more professional results in a much shorter time.

Don't forget Arup, which already has some special institutional expertise as it has analyzed the girder failures at length for Nordenson.
 
By the way, as this thread is about the AE911Truth study. we'd do well to consider Tony as an official representative of that group, as I just found reinforced when I checked out the beta-version of the upcoming new ae911truth.org web design:

https://beta.ae911truth.org/

Just scroll one screen down, and find photos of the men featured as "Who We Are":

20170911-111057-dr3ho.jpg
  • Richard Gage
  • Ronald Brookman
  • Scott Grainger
  • Daniel Barnum
  • Kamal Obeid
  • Tony Szamboti
So Tony Szamboti IS AE911Truth - "officially".

Tony, are you AE911Truth? Or is the new AE911Truth misrepresenting you as "I, Tony, am AE911Truth"? Do you have influence on what AE911Truth claims publicly? Do you help shape decisions?
 
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By the way, as this thread is about the AE911Truth study. we'd do well to consider Tony as an official representative of that group, as I just found reinforced when I checked out the beta-version of the upcoming new ae911truth.org web design:

https://beta.ae911truth.org/

Just scroll one screen down, and find photos of the men featured as "Who We Are":
  • Richard Gage
  • Ronald Brookman
  • Scott Grainger
  • Daniel Barnum
  • Kamal Obeid
  • Tony Szamboti
So Tony Szamboti IS AE911Truth - "officially".

Tony, are you AE911Truth? Or is the new AE911Truth misrepresenting you as "I, Tony, am AE911Truth"? Do you have influence on what AE911Truth claims publicly? Do you help shape decisions?

I think this is a bit of a stretch. Tony is certainly affiliated with AE911Truth. That is well documented as per your link and all of the materials he has helped them produce (reports, blog posts, etc.). But is it right to say he is AE911Truth? It seems like an unnecessary stretch. He's not even on the governing body of the organization, as far as we know. I don't think we should take the "Who we are" page so literally.

That said, the same question still stands regarding his approval of Hulsey and AE911Truth's clear misrepresentations of Hulsey's study to date given his affiliation with AE911Truth specifically and his advocacy on these issues in general. Tony will not answer that question directly (as shown over the last two pages of his transparent evasions in this thread) because he thinks the answer discredits AE911Truth and Hulsey (and it does), but, whether he types the answer out or not, the answer is reality--AE911Truth and Hulsey are clearly misrepresenting the scope of Hulsey's findings in an entirely indefensible way.

Gerrycan--the same question goes to you. Do you think Hulsey's conclusion that fire could not cause the collapse of the building can honestly be drawn from his work to date?
 
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I think this is a bit of a stretch. Tony is certainly affiliated with AE911Truth. That is well documented as per your link and all of the materials he has helped them produce (reports, blog posts, etc.). But is it right to say he is AE911Truth? It seems like an unnecessary stretch. He's not even on the governing body of the organization, as far as we know. I don't think we should take the "Who we are" page so literally.
Agreed, Tony is AE911 only slightly more than Gerry is (in that Tony is not anonymous). However he's probably the closest there is to an actual qualified spokesman. AE911 has always been hampered by their governing body not being very technical. Gage is a long retired architect, Kelly David is a manager, Tom Spellman has an undergraduate degree in architecture, Dan Barnum is a retired architect who immediately knew it was controlled demolition. None of them really have the technical knowledge to communicate effectively regarding complex analysis, and so AE911's position is coming through people like Tony and Gerry.

It's "Architects and Engineers", after all. So someone has to speak for the engineers - especially as their experience should be a lot more relevant than architects.
 
The specific points you bring up re potential inaccuracies in NIST's model that may have added error to its calculations are all fair points and can be subject to further debate an analysis. But the degree to which correcting for them would have altered the outcome in NIST's analysis is dependent upon many other factors as well, including--first and foremost--their actual heating model, which was extremely detailed and included a variable progression across the entire building, from which NIST modeled fire damage on 16 floors simultaneously. The damage NIST modeled was path dependent. Yes, elements near to each other all reached relatively similar temperatures at some point as a general matter, but in NIST"s model, they reached their temperatures individually in a certain predetermined sequence over the course of six hours. Hulsey did not apply such a heat model. As far as we can tell, all he did was take the a snapshot of the NIST temperatures at 6:00 pm and apply them to each element as if they were the maximum temperatures such elements reached. But that's not accurate. Many elements had already been heated more extensively and started cooling at that point, while many other elements would still yet be heated more prior to the collapse. Moreover, Hulsey only modeled two floors and, on those two floors, the portions of the floors he modeled fire damage were smaller than portions of the 16 floors on which NIST modeled fire damage. These limitations (along with other modeling and software differences) of Hulsey's model make it impossible for him to claim his structural revisions were implemented in a controlled way such that we can conclude that those structural changes, and not the limitations, were the cause of the discrepancy in outcomes as between Hulsey's model and NIST's.

Moreover, it is worth noting again that, in any event, NIST's model only showed one way (the way NIST through most probable) that fire could have caused the collapse of the building. Even if NIST was mistaken about that, it does not mean that collapse mode didn't occur under fire conditions different than what NIST modeled, or that any other collapse mode could not have occurred. This is pure, basic, obvious logic that should not even to be stated, but somehow it is completely lost as you, AE911Truth and Hulsey insist on being dishonest about the scope of his findings.

That may be the problem. The degree to which correcting NIST's errors would have changed the outcome of their model is not as dependent upon the 'many other factors' as you suggest, chiefly, the progression and extent of fire over time. This is because the features that restricted the movement of A2001 also gave the structure strength. I.e, the connections to the exterior structure, the column side plates, the girder stiffeners and the stiffness and friction of the concrete deck (even assuming no shear studs). Putting these features back in significantly reduces the structure's vulnerability to fire damage at any time, at any temperature, and at any location in the building, irrespective of how many floors you model simultaneously, and how many hours for. This is a problem in any model of collapse that acknowledges that office fires did not heat the the columns to temperatures where they would have lost sufficient strength to fail. These models rely on the failure of girders, as Tony has stated. When the thermal expansion of beams framing into A2001 was increased by 40% (and the side plate removed) the girder did not fail, precisely because of the stiffener. If you can't get failure with gross increases to inputs, you won't get it either by finely plotting numerous, high resolution inputs over multiple floors across a time period of hours.
WTCeval1.png
 
A question for the engineers:
20170911-121355-0tjwe.jpg
What's the vertical axis here? Shear Load (lb)? Compare it to:

20170911-121636-uoh1w.jpg
Which has "Shear Force (kip)". (1 kip = 1,000 pounds)

That suggests it's maybe just millions of pounds? A shear load of -0.8 being like 800 kip?

Seems a bit odd that there's two different type of graphs for the same thing? Were the two connections done in different ways? Different people?

And why the heck is there a data point for 15 inches of displacement? The graph is presented as being the stress/strain for Girder C4333 to Bean C4328, with a fin connection:
20170911-122512-x32et.jpg
So what's up with the graph? This connection looks like it should fail at under 2 inches displacement (350 kip). So why is there a response curve up to 15 inches (425 kip)?

I'm probably missing something here, but it looks like if you used that curve for your non-linear spring then you get a far more resilient connection than in reality for your full scale model.

Perhaps there's a separate failure criteria that he just did not talk about?
 
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That may be the problem. The degree to which correcting NIST's errors would have changed the outcome of their model is not as dependent upon the 'many other factors' as you suggest, chiefly, the progression and extent of fire over time. This is because the features that restricted the movement of A2001 also gave the structure strength. I.e, the connections to the exterior structure, the column side plates, the girder stiffeners and the stiffness and friction of the concrete deck (even assuming no shear studs). Putting these features back in significantly reduces the structure's vulnerability to fire damage at any time, at any temperature, and at any location in the building, irrespective of how many floors you model simultaneously, and how many hours for. This is a problem in any model of collapse that acknowledges that office fires did not heat the the columns to temperatures where they would have lost sufficient strength to fail. These models rely on the failure of girders, as Tony has stated. When the thermal expansion of beams framing into A2001 was increased by 40% (and the side plate removed) the girder did not fail, precisely because of the stiffener. If you can't get failure with gross increases to inputs, you won't get it either by finely plotting numerous, high resolution inputs over multiple floors across a time period of hours.
WTCeval1.png

And yet Arup, which modeled those elements as well, also found girder failures were possible in a variety of heating and cooling scenarios. WAI confirmed those scenarios after an examination of Arup's models. WAI also modeled a different failure scenario under different fire assumptions. Why was Arup's model different than NIST's? Chiefly because it modeled different heating scenarios. Why is Hulsey's model different than NIST's? One major likely reason is because it modeled a different heating scenario.

In any case, John85, you continue to evade my responses to you re how Hulsey's conclusion cannot be supported based on the work he has done to date. Do you agree that his stated conclusion that fire could not have collapsed the building is unsupported by the work he has done to date.
 
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And yet Arup, which modeled those elements as well, also found girder failures were possible in a variety of heating and cooling scenarios. WAI confirmed those scenarios after an examination of Arup's models. WAI also modeled a different failure scenario under different fire assumptions. Why was Arup's model different than NIST's? Chiefly because it modeled different heating scenarios. Why is Hulsey's model different than NIST's? One major reason is likely because it modeled a different heating scenario.

In any case, John85, you continue to evade my responses to you re how Hulsey's conclusion cannot be supported based on the work he has done to date. Do you agree that his stated conclusion that fire could not have collapsed the building is unsupported by the work he has done to date.

We've already seen that Hulsey and Tony have said that those models used unsubstantiated high temperatures. And back on NIST, correcting their errors does significantly increase the strength of their model irrespective of the nature of the fire, whereas your contention was that modelling more floors and a progression of fire over time rendered these omissions less important. The slide from Hulsey's presentation showed that a girder forced off its seat by a gross increase in thermal expansion inputs did not buckle when the stiffener was included.

On the second point, as I mentioned before, I think Hulsey will address the ARUP and WAI models in the final report, because he included a slide about one of them. They are obvious studies to consider. He said he would not read widely about the subject until having completed his own model. In addition to guessing what he might release, we can reflect on what we know he's going to do, which is model how the global collapse could have been caused to happen. If the best way to create what we saw happen is the simultaneous removal of all columns in a manner wildly inconsistent with fire, then yes, he will have provided strong evidence that [any] fire did not cause the collapse. It would be a small victory to say that he has not (yet) proved that fire could not have caused the collapse. I'll tell you why. Hulsey and others from AE911 have shown that the government's own official explanation of the collapse is fundamentally and blatantly inaccurate. Their study was either the result of carefully sustained incompetence, or fraud.
 
We've already seen that Hulsey and Tony have said that those models used unsubstantiated high temperatures. And back on NIST, correcting their errors does significantly increase the strength of their model irrespective of the nature of the fire, whereas your contention was that modelling more floors and a progression of fire over time rendered these omissions less important. The slide from Hulsey's presentation showed that a girder forced off its seat by a gross increase in thermal expansion inputs did not buckle when the stiffener was included.

On the second point, as I mentioned before, I think Hulsey will address the ARUP and WAI models in the final report, because he included a slide about one of them. They are obvious studies to consider. He said he would not read widely about the subject until having completed his own model. In addition to guessing what he might release, we can reflect on what we know he's going to do, which is model how the global collapse could have been caused to happen. If the best way to create what we saw happen is the simultaneous removal of all columns in a manner wildly inconsistent with fire, then yes, he will have provided strong evidence that [any] fire did not cause the collapse. It would be a small victory to say that he has not (yet) proved that fire could not have caused the collapse. I'll tell you why. Hulsey and others from AE911 have shown that the government's own official explanation of the collapse is fundamentally and blatantly inaccurate. Their study was either the result of carefully sustained incompetence, or fraud.

Tony and Hulsey have argued (without basis) that WAI's temperatures were too high. Neither Tony nor Hulsey has alleged the same about any of Arup's heating scenarios. In any case, mere assertions are not proofs. Neither Tony nor Hulsey is a fire science expert and neither has developed an actual fire model for WTC7. The best Tony can do is to try to conflate Arup's analysis with Nordenson's floor collapse propagation error (as he did in this thread several times) to confuse the issue. Interestingly, Hulsey's slide attempted to the same thing. But you realize that makes no sense, right? Both the Arup and WAI findings remain unassailed by Hulsey. These are serious findings prepared by serious firms that, unlike Hulsey, are actual forensic engineering experts with experience modeling tall buildings. And these models were prepared in a litigation with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake (all of which amount the plaintiffs would have been entitled to if they had alleged and proved any of AE911Truth's CD theories, but they didn't even allege them or anything close to them).

On the second point, you, like seemingly every other truther, is evading addressing Hulsey's stated conclusion, which conclusion he has been stating for over a year now. Why can't a single truther in this thread simply state whether they believe Hulsey has proved that fires could not have collapsed the building? If no one can actually type those words, why are they ok with Hulsey speaking them and AE911Truth disseminating them? It's not some minor aspect of his study that is being grossly misrepresented--it is the headline conclusion.

And, by the way, Hulsey's claim that he would not read other studies came back at a time when he was pretending that the point of his study was a blank slate analysis of WTC7 to determine the cause of its collapse. He has since completely jettisoned that line of investigation by instead deciding to focus his study only on attempting to disprove NIST. This was a 180 that I noted in this thread several months ago.
 
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Tony and Hulsey have argued (without basis) that WAI's temperatures were too high. Neither Tony nor Hulsey has alleged the same about any of Arup's heating scenarios. In any case, mere assertions are not proofs. Neither Tony nor Hulsey is a fire science expert and neither has developed an actual fire model for WTC7. The best Tony can do is to try to conflate Arup's analysis with Nordenson's floor collapse propagation error (as he did in this thread several times) to confuse the issue. Interestingly, Hulsey's slide attempted to the same thing. But you realize that makes no sense, right? Both the Arup and WAI findings remain unassailed by Hulsey. These are serious findings prepared by serious firms that, unlike Hulsey, are actual forensic engineering experts with experience modeling tall buildings.

Hulsey is an expert in structural failure, and I note you do appear to be keen to limit the area on which he has legitimate authority to buildings which are not skyscrapers. I don't find it persuasive. I believe the same principles related to the failure of bridges and low-rise structures can be applied to floor assemblies within, and indeed, the entirety of, high-rises too. But you have not tried to defend your contention that the modelling of more floors and fire over time renders the influence of NIST's errors insignificant.

On the second point, you, like seemingly every other truther, is evading addressing Hulsey's stated conclusion, which conclusion he has been stating for over a year now. Why can't a single truther in this thread simply state whether they believe Hulsey has proved that fires could not have collapsed the building? If no one can actually type those words, why are they ok with Hulsey speaking them and AE911Truth disseminating them? It's not some minor aspect of his study that is being grossly misrepresented--it is the headline conclusion.

I have already said that Hulsey may not have substantiated it yet. But think of the impact of the limited conclusions already obvious from Hulsey's work that NIST left out significant structural features in a pattern that lined up to exaggerate the initiation mechanism they proposed. In the face of this information, should my trust in the official account be increased, or reduced?
 
Hulsey is an expert in structural failure, and I note you do appear to be keen to limit the area on which he has legitimate authority to buildings which are not skyscrapers. I don't find it persuasive. I believe the same principles related to the failure of bridges and low-rise structures can be applied to floor assemblies within, and indeed, the entirety of, high-rises too. But you have not tried to defend your contention that the modelling of more floors and fire over time renders the influence of NIST's errors insignificant.



I have already said that Hulsey may not have substantiated it yet. But think of the impact of the limited conclusions already obvious from Hulsey's work that NIST left out significant structural features in a pattern that lined up to exaggerate the initiation mechanism they proposed. In the face of this information, should my trust in the official account be increased, or reduced?

Hulsey is an expert on bridges. Some of the issues are doubtlessly the same between bridges and tall buildings, but no one is about to hire him to design a tall building. Meanwhile, there are many actual experts in tall buildings in the world who would not need to go through a long, and potentially error-fraught journey of discovery to learn how to best apply structural engineering concepts in the tall building context. Some of those experts were employed or contracted by NIST, WAI and Arup in connection with their respective analyses; none of those experts were involved in the Hulsey study. Does it mean Hulsey can't get it right? No. But, at a minimum, it is a good reason to not simply accept his bald assertions re the potential flaws in other studies that were conducted by actual experts in the applicable areas.

(You ignored my point re Arup, by the way--do you understand that there is no dispute about their heat model and that they showed the girder could fail in several ways?)

And you think he may not have substantiated his case that fire could not cause the collapse of the building? You seriously think that a single model of two floors of the building on which a small portion of the floor was analyzed for damage under a single, simplified fire scenario could, in some circumstance, be sufficient proof that fire could not under any circumstances have caused the collapse of the building? That is what Hulsey is claiming. And, at this point, I don't think Hulsey has even established enough to make you doubt that NIST was incorrect in some material way (though that may come out of his study later once we better understand his heat model and connection models), let alone to doubt that fires could have caused the collapse in one of the many other ways Hulsey did not model at all.
 
either Tony nor Hulsey is a fire science expert and neither has developed an actual fire model for WTC7. The best Tony can do is to try to conflate Arup's analysis with Nordenson's floor collapse propagation error (as he did in this thread several times) to confuse the issue.

Hulsey seems remarkably unscientific in his interest in the fires. At 20:20 in the video he asks where's the combustibility in a steel structure. Then at 1:12:19

72:24 [I have a slide] showing an every floor
72:28 what kind of activity was going on. You
72:31 know there's almost all financial. So
72:34 one has to ask yourselves,
72:36 I don't believe people's investment
72:38 portfolios would be out on the tables
72:40 I think they'd be locked in a safe. So how
72:43 much paper was out there I just don't
72:45 see where there was a lot of combustibility

72:47 going on in that structure. So, to be on fire for
72:51 seven hours which, over that period of
72:53 time, probably not very high temperatures were developed
73:59 And that in that period of time, now I don't
73:04 know this to be the truth, but I'm told
73:06 that two o'clock in the afternoon
73:08 the fire department left and
73:11 laughed and said it was it was not a
73:13 problem
and yet [?] happened. So that's that's a bit
73:17 disturbing in itself

Now I know Hulsey had a narrow brief, but since the goal of his study was to disprove the fire hypothesis, then it's a bit bizarre that he talking such uninformed nonsense about the fire.

And this might just be me, but I found it astonishing that he did not know that the iconic image of the building collapsing showed the North side. At 34:10.
20170911-140917-zpiqq.jpg

That doesn't necessarily change anything, it just struck me as odd. Maybe it's just his perspective has been on the building by itself, and not so much in the context of its surroundings.
 
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...

Now I know Hulsey had a narrow brief, but since the goal of his study was to disprove the fire hypothesis, then it's a bit bizarre that he talking such uninformed nonsense about the fire.

...

That doesn't necessarily change anything, it just struck me as odd. Maybe it's just his perspective has been on the building by itself, and not so much in the context of its surroundings.

Right--both of those incidents jumped out at me. Hulsey made several more offhanded comments dismissing the severity of the fires throughout the talk, as I recall. He also at one point stated the the building was sprinklered without mentioning that the sprinklers on the lower 20 floors (where everyone suspects the collapse scenario originated) were fed by a water main that was severed in the collapse of WTC1, a point which is noted in the NIST report, which really makes me wonder how closely he even read the NIST report. (Moreover, even if all the sprinklers had been gravity fed from tanks, there wouldn't have been enough water pressure for those sprinklers to fight fires on multiple floors throughout the building at once.)
 
And you think he may not have substantiated his case that fire could not cause the collapse of the building? You seriously think that a single model of two floors of the building on which a small portion of the floor was analyzed for damage under a single, simplified fire scenario could, in some circumstance, be sufficient proof that fire could not under any circumstances have caused the collapse of the building? That is what Hulsey is claiming. And, at this point, I don't think Hulsey has even established enough to make you doubt that NIST was incorrect in some material way (though that may come out of his study later once we better understand his heat model and connection models), let alone to doubt that fires could have caused the collapse in one of the many other ways Hulsey did not model at all

I seriously think that NIST's model had as its initiation mechanism the unseating of A2001 from column 79. This was a singular event. If this initiation was impossible, the rest of NIST's model fails. Hulsey has already shown that this initiation mechanism was impossible. To disagree means claiming that the 'accidental' omission of the stiffeners, supporting beams, side plates and concrete friction as well as the fixing of the eastern supports made no difference. And if you step back from point-scoring, does it trouble you at all that the 7-year official study is so radically unconvincing?
 
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