Can an air fire really significantly weaken steel so that it can fail?

Question

Seriously, do your own little fire
experiment at home.

Make a little steel bridge or a steel
structure, and overload it so much with
bricks or dead weights, to the point
where it is just about to give way and
completely collapse... Go on... like this:

Use a 2 or 3 mm thick steel bar or flat,
you can buy this from any hardware
store. Hold it up at both ends with bricks
at both ends like the picture below:

...........BBBB
...........BBBB
__________________
BB.........fire........BB
BB.........fire........BB

(B = Brick, ignore the dots)

The steel bridge is indicated by ______

Now use steel or aluminium baking tray
underneath the bridge, filled with jet
fuel, or kerosene, and light it up with a
burning newspaper.

Burn it for as long as you like in open
air, and see if your steel bridge will
collapse due to being weakened by
exposure to air fire.

Seriously, try this experiment at home!

Use as much fuel as you like.

Does it collapse?

Try this experiment, without any bias or
prejudice about the expectations. Then
when you are satisfied with the result,
find out what really happened on 9/11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7PN-8T2VY

http://www.truth911.net

You owe it to yourself to test the truth
about what you have been told on the
news.

Because, what if you had been lied to
and tricked? What if the last 6-7 years
of scary news about Muslims, had been
completely FAKE and deceptive?

See for yourself... see if your heavily
overloaded steel column or steel bridge
(on the verge of collapsing due to the
weight alone), can really be significantly
weakened by being exposed to open
air fire.

Prove it to yourself, if you are so very
sure that air fires can weaken steel
enough to cause them to fail. Go and
try this test for yourself! If you are not an
adult, ask your parents or a grown-up to
do this test for you. See if you can really
get steel to collapse from an air fire.

If you don't like this experiment, you
could try this test: get a steel
wire basket (laundry basket or even a
steel-wire dish rack, or similar), or even
get a vertical column, then put a lot
of bricks on top of it to the point where
adding one more brick would make it
collapse into itself (just so it is as heavily
loaded as possible without collapsing),
then burn it for as long as you like in an
open air fire, using as much kerosene,
or as much jet fuel as you like, for as
long as you like.

See if it collapses! Go on!

Just make sure, with all these fire
experiments, have a bag of kitty litter or
fine sand and a shovel ready, so you can
dump it all on the tray of fuel to smother
out the flames to put it out.

Prove to yourself that air fires really can
weaken steel significantly enough to
cause instant and global collapse... be
very scientific and honest with your
testing too; no prejudice or bias is
allowed in any form of scientific testing!

Try it

PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT UNLESS YOU HAVE ACTUALLY PERFORMED THESE TESTS, AND PROVEN THAT STEEL CAN REALLY BE SIGNIFICANTLY WEAKENED IN AN AIR FIRE...

DO NOT ASSUME ANYTHING! DO
NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING I SAY OR
HINT AT... JUST TRY TO PROVE
WHAT YOU BELIEVE AS BEING 100%
CORRECT...

The mass media has told you all to
believe that the steel of the Twin Towers
(made of Fe iron) could be significantly
weakened by an air fire, to cause a
complete and total 100% collapse right
down to the ground floors.

So I say: "Prove it! " - Prove that it is
possible for air fire to weaken steel so
that a heavily overloaded structure that
is on the verge of collapse (due to the
significant jet plane impact damage),
can collapse due to exposure to the heat
from an air fire...

PROVE IT TO YOURSELF...

ASSUME NOTHING...

TEST EVERYTHING & BELIEVE WHAT
YOU SEE WITH YOUR OWN EYES

Go on

You have nothing to be afraid of, and
the results of your test can settle this
debate

Ok, now ask yourself:

How could WTC 7 collapse due to an
air fire? (It fell completely to the ground
about 7 hours after the Twin Towers,
but it was not hit by any plane)

Even the NIST engineers said in their
report that the WTC 7 collapse was a
"mystery". So, how could a 47-storey
skyscraper just disintegrate into a pile
of rubble and concrete powder, due to
a few, very small fires?

Think about it!

It was all over the news. WTC 7 did fall
completely, at free-fall speed, due to an
"air fire"; which is the official explanation
for its collapse.

This kind of engineering failure had
never before happened in history!

Yes, a steel bridge did collapse, but
it was not due to fire - it was in a state of
disrepair and lots of concrete bridges
collapse all the time, due to impact
damage and serious structural flaws.
The Twin Towers and WTC 7 were not
designed like concrete bridges. They
were steel-framed, highly overdesigned
buildings with 6x safety!

I am no dummy. I hold an Honours
degree (1st class) in Mechanical
Engineering, and I also have a doctorate
(PhD) - I actually teach materials science
at University level.

In answer to:

>> It wasn't an "open air" fire on either of the WTC towers, it was a confined fire.

---- Actually, confined fires are even
colder, because they are oxygen starved
and not burn very hot. Temperature
depends on combustion rate and O2
availability.

>> Where there is a confined fire, energy in (fire) > energy out so the temperature rises. It is very simple thermodynamics.

----Very very ignorant and wrong.

>>How do you think steel is made in the first place? It's made in a furnace that heats up to well over 3000 degrees. The furnace uses nothing more than fossil fuel to heat it up. How does that fossil fuel fire get that hot??

----- a blast furnace gets very hot due to
strong fan forced air introducing a lot of
oxygen into the combustion. Steel melts
at 1532 C (2800 F)

----- also, steel is not easy to melt. If it
was easy to melt, foundrymen would not
need massive pumps and bellows to
introduce a lot of air into a foundry
furnace, and even with hand pumps, the
old blacksmiths needed to hammer
steel to shape it, because even red or
orange hot steel is still very strong (much
stronger than air! - and unable to cause
a free-fall complete collapse so easily)

Modern day methods of melting steel
require enormous amounts of energy.
The most common methods of melting
steel today, include induction furnaces,
arc furnaces and blast furnaces (which
rely on very very high wind velocities,
similar to high speed winds introduced
into a jet engine travelling at high speed)

But in still air there is NO CHANCE
that air fires get hotter than 250 C, and
you can verify this with a pyrometer or a
high temperature thermocouple sensor
if you like. Go ahead. Paper burning
temperature is Fahrenheit 451F=233 C

Steel starts weakening at 300C

FACT: Before 9/11 (September 11),
no high rise steel-framed building has
ever collapsed due to fire damage, out
of over a dozen building fires. Not one
has collapsed due to fire.

So why did WTC 7 collapse due to fire?

Or did it collapse due to something
else?

Ask questions. Think. Don't be a dumb
gullible sheep being led to the slaughter
in Iraq and soon Iran.

THINK. QUESTION. TEST EVERY
BELIEF YOU HAVE TO PROVE IT IS
CONSISTENT WITH FACTS & KNOWN
SCIENCE.

DO NOT ASSUME.

DO NOT GIVE YOUR TRUST SO
EASILY, WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE.

Just remember Adolf Hitler and the
Nazis, who lied to the Germans and got
them all to accept Hitler's dictatorship
and Nazi regime. Herman Goering and
the Nazis burned down the Reichstag
(German Parliament Building) and
instilled fear and panic into all the people
so that they could quickly install Hitler
as a dictator.

Germans were disguised as
Polish & murdered Germans at
a radio station to start a war.

Look at any materials engineering
handbook that was published before
9/11 and find out the actual melting
temperatures for iron (the main
ingredient in steel without the carbon),
and for aluminium.

The melting point for aluminium is about
550 to 650 C.

Get yourself some aluminium foil, and
put it inside an air fire.

If it turns into liquid, then you have proven
that your flame temperature indeed does
exceed 550 C.

Go on.

Remember, at about 650 C, WTC steel
is still at about 50% of its top strength
(well over 650 MPa, or about 10 times
stronger than pure aluminium).

So if you can melt aluminium foil and
turn it into silvery liquid using just the
heat from an open air fire (or even a
"confined air fire" , whatever), then I will
concede that I am wrong, and admit that
there is a possibility that the 3 WTC
steel buildings "could have" collapsed
due to being weakened by an air fire.

But prove to me first that you can melt
al-foil in open air fire!

Ok, look at this "Strength vs. Temperature" chart for steel.

http://www.911research.com/wtc/analysis/fires/steel.html



Notice that steel does not lose any strength up to about 300 C. It drops to about half strength around 600-650 C. Then it weakens to very low strength at around 1200 C (behaving like rubber, like a weak soft flexible plastic, but still in tact and still a solid up to 1532 C).

So how do you explain all the molten metal at Ground Zero?

Look at the firefighter's testimony and the actual video evidence of molten metal on 9/11...


http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=molten+metal+wtc&search=Search

HOW DID THE METAL GET SO HOT, TO CAUSE SO MUCH MOLTEN METAL, WHEN IT IS A KNOWN FACT THAT OPEN AIR FIRES DO NOT MELT STEEL OR ALUMINIUM?

Watch the videos:

http://www.truth911.net

Do the experiments I suggested and
try to prove me wrong in anything I have
said. You owe it to yourself to SEE how
steel behaves when exposed to air fire

Watch this videos about molten steel
found at WTC Ground Zero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p_o7d8rDCQ

WHAT CREATED SUCH INTENSE
HEAT TO CAUSE STEEL TO MELT?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=molten+metal+wtc&search=Search

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypOlZLHvEE&NR=1

Answer 1

They unintentionally did this experiment in California with a gasoline truck and a steel bridge. The bridge collapsed.

Your experiment is not representative of what happened at the WTC and is indicative of the level of scientific understanding the WTC CTs have.

-----

Ooooh...I love the additional details. Dude, if you have a PhD (I really do) it must have been granted by the School of Moonbat Crazy. Common sense says that your experiment is completely worthless.

Answer 2

The WTC was not just under normal loading and fire. It had taken a tremendous impact that was sure to weaken the main structural support + plus it's normal loading + the decrease in the material allowables due to the fire.

The WTC was constructed of an outer ring of columns (244 columns every 100 cms apart). You can obviously see from the photographs that many of these were damaged.

Also you are not taking into account structural deformations of the steel due to the fire. In a buckling/collapse failure small perturbations can lead to drastic results.

If you have done an "experiment" in your backyard how did you know you had the steel loaded to the breaking point? The allowables for steel in MMPDS and MIL-HDBK-5 are A and B basis, the actual allowable can be 10%-20% higher. Steel comes in a wide variety, how do you know that you were using the same steel as in the WTC?

Answer 3

It wasn't an "open air" fire on either of the WTC towers, it was a confined fire. Where there is a confined fire, energy in (fire) > energy out so the temperature rises. It is very simple thermodynamics.

How do you think steel is made in the first place? It's made in a furnace that heats up to well over 3000 degrees. The furnace uses nothing more than fossil fuel to heat it up. How does that fossil fuel fire get that hot??

EDIT:
My point is, that your 'open air' experiment is a bad analogy. The tower fires were definitely not 'open air', so heat would build up and the internal temperature would rise well above the 'open air' flame temperature of jet fuel.

The heat capacity of all of the materials inside the 86th (or whatever floors the planes were embedded in) is much greater than 'air'.

Yeah, sure I can do your little experiment, and the flame temperature will not exceed the LFL of JetA by much, and the heat will be dissipated by the metal and bricks, and the LFL temperature will be maintained -- all is fine. So, why don't you set up a real experiment to simulate the actual conditions on that floor (and a few surrounding floors higher and lower) and take some real temperature measurements?
.

Answer 4

Assume the WTC was designed by competent engineers. It is reasonable to expect that the design of the then tallest proposed buildings in the world would have received special attention, by some of the world's leading experts.

They took the trouble to design for a thermal coating on the steel members to protect them from the heat of a building fire. Why did they bother do that, if the steel would not have been affected by the heat of an 'air fire'?

If you knew anything about metallurgy, you would know that all metals, including steel, change their behavior when they are heated, not just when they get to their 'melting points'.

Combine the facts that the thermal coatings on the steel members were largely blown off by the mechanical impact of the 747s, the heat present was well in excess of what you can achieve in open air using a few ounces of fuel, and that the steel members themselves were subjected to incredible stresses and displacements by the same impacts.

It is a testament to the building designers that the towers stayed up as long as they did, given the terrible circumstances of that awful day.

Please do not go on tainting the memories of those who died on 9/11 with your wild-*** rumor mongering and conspiracy theories which flies in the face of generally accepted engineering knowledge.

Answer 5

Actually, I performed quite a different experiment, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that steel weakens significantly at air/fuel fire temperatures.

I have gotten into the hobby of .... Making knives.

Yep. I take ordinary carbon steel available at almost any hardware store, and smith it to create decent (OK, not so decent) knives. Believe me, the forge that I cobbled together does not generate anywhere near the melting temperature of steel. Yet, for some reason, I can bend the steel, and hammer it into shape.

And, you can too. Don't have a forge, and have no interest in making one? Don't have to.

Get yourself some steel, and your kitchen stove top. An old butter knife will do just fine. Using pliers, recommend Vise Grips. (please do not burn yourself) stick the knife into the flame (or in the coils of your stove if you have an electric. Sorry, those of you that have the glasstops will have to play elsewhere.) Wait for it to heat up to a moderate level of red throughout the steel.

Then, bend it. Wasn't so tough, and you were applying somewhere in the range of 50 pounds of pressure, give or take. Now imagine how much pressure the steel in the WTC buildings were under.

Answer 6

Steel at room temperature: 100% Strength

Steel at -50F: 111% Strength

Steel at 500F: 91% Strength

Steel at 900F: 76% Strength

Steel at 1100F: 69% Strength

Steel at 1350F: 44% Strength

Steel at >1700F: <10% Strength.

See a correlation Here??

Ever seen a black smith pounding out steel at 850 degrees? Why does this work?

The confined temperature in the WTC was about 1100 to 1500F.

All it takes is one failure to get a floor falling and nothing will stop it. The momentum is more than the building was built to withstand in perfect order. Drop thirty storeys of a building from 10 feet and see what happens to anything around it or under it.

Try performing that little experiment in the confined space of an oven, not in air, and see what happens when the temperature is allowed to build like in the WTC.

Answer 7

I don't need to do any experiments. I have personally rebuilt structural steel pipe supports in processing plants where fires on the ground fueled by liquids very similar to jet fuel have heated the steel sufficiently for it to begin to fail.

These were lightly loaded supports. Had they had a stress level similar to those in a large building they would have completely failed.

You have to realize that the steel in a large building tends to have a fairly high load or stress level. This is one way the cost of the building is kept down. Steel looses a great deal of its strength at temperatures in the 1000 deg F range. A temperature well within the temperature of a fire using jet fuel or kerosene.

Answer 8

I believe you are hinting at the WTC collapse theory due to burning jet fuel. Steel has a melting point of 3000+ degrees Celsius. Such high temps. can be reached with large quantities of aviation fuel burning in a confined place.

Even if it was a controlled demolition, does that clear bin Laden and al Qaida ? Is Islamic terrorism justified ?

Answer 9

I have my own objective question. If a building fire can't weaken the structural steel to the point of failure why does the building code require that the steel have a coating of insulation. Surely it's not required to keep the steel from getting too cold!

Answer 10

I am with you on this and there are so much unanswered question around 9/11, it drove me nuts for some time. But eventually I let it go. The mystery of 9/11 will never be totally solved.what really pisses me of is, that 9/11 was sold as attack, instead of total incompetence and failure of the administration, which got 121 warnings (official 9/11 report) And then to trump it, instead of firing everybody without pension, they start wars with the public screaming for blood. I can never get over that.