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Originally Posted by Atreides88
I apologize before hand if I lose anybody here, but I'll step in as an engineer if I may. Also, as much as I'd like to cite my sources, I don't think any of y'all want to pay for $800's worth of engineering textbooks.
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One can usually find the necessary links online to support their degrees. I can find enough to support my psych degree.
[QUOTE=Atreides88]The collapse of WTC 7 makes complete and total sense from an engineering perspective. I'll list my arguments to make it a bit more readable.
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Originally Posted by Atreides88
3.) While fire may not cause failure outright, it can lead up to it. As steel and just about every metal is heated, it becomes more ductile(malleable, can bend easily) and thus will deform under loading. Also, let us not forget that these fires were started by aircraft crashing into the WTC 1 and WTC 2, which means they were no doubt accelerated by jet fuel(I don't recall off hand what most commercial jet fuel is). This means they were burning at far higher temperatures than would other burn in a normal structural fire, which also means they were closer to the melting point of the steel. As you get closer and closer to that melting point, steel becomes more and more ductile, and will begin to deform far more easily than it would otherwise.
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At what temperature would the steel used to construct the skeleton of a building become weakened to any significant degree?
http://web.archive.org/web/200308181...fire/fr006.htm
This site has a lot of good data. How hot would a fire fueled by your average office burn? Add to that the firefighters quotes saying there were only small fires and, as NIST concluded in their 2004 report, fire played almost no role in the collapse.
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Originally Posted by Atreides88
4.) WTC 7 did not collapse until after WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed. The energy from those two towers collapsing had to go somewhere. It was directed into all of the other buildings and objects surrounding it. As the building falls, the potential energy it has is quickly converted into kinetic energy. We'll just look at a single floor. As that floor falls it converts potential energy into kinetic energy and then when it impacts the ground it must then "find" a place for that kinetic energy it has to go. Some is converted into sound energy, the rest will cause the debris to scatter and explode, sending debris everywhere and causing damage in the surrounding buildings.
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Are you talking about seismic kinetic energy or contact with debris?