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MIT REPORT [on WTC Collapse] IS INCOMPETENT

Posted By: Aladdin <aladdin(@)scientist.com>
Date: Wednesday, 17 April 2002, 9:54 a.m.

If I may add to the current discussion on just the one point of how the MIT article went ... it would appear that the MIT professors merely "glossed" over these few technical points rather than treating it with the detail it deserves.

> 1. The Twin Towers were designed to survive the impact of a
> large airplane.

> They twin towers DID survive the "impact" of a large airplane!
> What they didn't survive was the intense heat from the
> burning jet fuel

> Quoted from MIT article at
> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/skyscrapers.html

> The WTC towers were indeed designed to withstand the impact of
> a large commercial aircraft. They were not, however,
> designed to withstand the prolonged effect of fire
> resulting from a bomb in the guise of a fully fueled
> aircraft.

and they went on to say that ...

> Some 60 tons or more of jet fuel could have easily caused
> sustained high temperatures of 1,500 F and higher. Under these
> conditions, structural steel looses rigidity and strength.

Yes this is true if a "sustained" fire at 1500F can be achieved over an extended period of time in order to cause the steel to lose its rigidity and strength gradually — high strength steel such as used for tall structures has a rating of at least 2 hours which normally means that it will retain its physical characteristics for that period as a MINIMUM before failing "catastrophically" as we have seen it did at the WTC. How much time did it take for the Towers to fall from time of impact?  [South Tower: 47 minutes; North Tower: 1 hour and 44 minutes.]  This question was never addressed by the MIT report.

> The resulting failure of the 2-3 floor system at the site of
> impact sent the 30 to 25 floors above free-falling onto the 80
> to 85 floor structure below.

This is a false statement. The floors above did NOT free-fall. If the 2-3 layers that were hit became mashed potato the floors above would just continue to lower itself and SIT on the floors below ... THE FLOORS ABOVE DID NOT FREE FALL!

> The enormous energy released by this collapse was too large
> to be absorbed by the structure below.

FALSE! An extension of the above.

> That impact may have ultimately caused the explosive
> buckling, floor after floor, of the WTC towers.

I would expect an MIT Professor to do better than this.

A tall structure such as the WTC would have been designed for a certain "failure mechanism" that would prohibit such a simple mode of failure ... failure by buckling floor by floor, which is one of the first modes to be considered by the designers, would have been "restrained" at certain KEY points along the building's height, that is unless those points in the lower floors far below were rendered "ineffective" by another external force such as a minor detonation. It would require "several" key points to be made useless before such a failure can occur.

> Similar to a car crash in a wall, the towers crashed into
> the ground with an almost free-fall velocity.

No competent engineer can agree with this analogy. This imagery of a car crashing into a wall to "simulate" a building failure is only meant to dupe the public.

What we have witnessed on TV is a total failure of the 2 WTC Towers which cannot occur unless the impact and explosion occurred at the LOWER floors and even then .... Those planes hit the buildings at the upper third and, at the very least, the lower third should have remained standing!

We have actually witnessed the deliberate DEMOLITION of the WTC by, not only the impact of the planes but also by some other unknown devices that were detonated at crucial points in the building's structure.

I am trained in Engineering as well as Tall Steel Structures and have worked with high strength steel, and I have seen catastrophic failures before in other structures as well as demolition work ... the MIT professors are NOT TELLING THE TRUTH.

A close inspection of the remaining steel would be sufficient to verify the real story but apparently this is not possible due to the removal of the "evidence"!

These 2 men — Oral Buyukozturk, Professor and Franz-Josef Ulm, Associate Professor — both of them are versant in Structures and Materials apparently but their report would have failed Engineering 101 ... they may have put their names on the MIT report but they certainly did not write it.

That is my honest opinion as an engineer. What is painful to me is the silence of the others in the engineering fraternity.


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