Humint Events Online: Can Hydrocarbon Fires Weaken Steel Structures? An Experiment.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Can Hydrocarbon Fires Weaken Steel Structures? An Experiment.

An experiment, modeled basically after what I described here.

A cast iron pot filled with water, weight about five pounds, was placed on a crude framework built from coat hanger wires:


the beginning Posted by Picasa

Then I cut a few of the support "columns" on one side to mimic plane damage:


"columns" are severed Posted by Picasa

Note, the pot started tipping after I severed these wires.

Underneath, I put a piece of wood, some newspaper, and then drenched the newspaper with gasoline.

Then I lit the newspaper and gasoline:


fire! Posted by Picasa


more fire Posted by Picasa

After a while, the fire died down:


fire dies down Posted by Picasa

Then after about ten minutes, the fire died completely:


fire is dead Posted by Picasa

And my flimsy little steel wire structure held, and the tipping pot stayed upright!

So, my contention is, hydrocarbon fires do NOT significantly weaken steeel structures to cause them to collapse.

If my flimsy bent-coat-hanger wires could support their load after a big fire, how is a strongly-built steel framed building supposed to collapse from fire?

Phase Two-- I will construct a better model and use kerosene instead of gasoline.

21 Comments:

Blogger PerpetualYnquisitive said...

Another thing to consider about the fires in the WTC towers is that the steel frame would transfer heat away from the areas with fire.

The columns would act as a heatsink, much the same way that the one on your computers CPU does.

1:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now THERE'S a scientific experiment if I've ever seen one! You've convinced me!

4:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just read your latest DU post and I must say the only thing goofier or more idiotic than trying to equate a bunch of chicken wire and a concrete block with the WTC is someone trying to pass that laughable mess off as a serious anaylsis and experiment. Really. You need to get out more.

7:03 AM  
Blogger PerpetualYnquisitive said...

Hey Spooked,

I suggest for your next experiment that you try to see if you can reproduce the "fireball" from the "2nd plane's impact."

Take a styrofoam cup of kerosene and throw it at the top of a high fence with a small open flame ( i.e. cloth soaked in kerosene and tied to the fence & ignited) on it to ignite the kerosene upon impact.

I'll bet you'll be surprised by the results.

P.S. Best to have a fire extinguisher nearby :)

8:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Holy Shit!
That structure looks just like the World Trade Center!!!
The coat hangers, the pot of water...PERFECT!!!!
Yer a fucking genius!!!!

5:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That makes as much sense as testing the tensile strength of your forehead by whacking it with a hammer until your skull cracks.

There is a mess on aisle 3, time to go back to work at your real job sparky.

6:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A wire hanger simulation ... Brilliant!

12:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Excellent analysis. The only way those buildings could have come down so completely is through controlled demolition. Just look at how they came down and how every other structure intentionally demolished comes down and they are identical. It isn't a case of people not seeing this, but of people refusing to believe this.

1:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you considered flinging a flaming metal object filled with jet fuel at your structure? You'll need some type of flaming-metal-object flinging device to fling it with the proper amount of force. Perhaps you could jerry-rig a toaster.

4:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You didn't allow for the fact that Big Foot was jumping up and down on top of the WTC and it was this added force that 'smushed', (sorry for the techno-speak), the buildings.


Jimmy's Attack Rabbit

5:55 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have you ever been around a building that was demolished through controlled demolition?

I lived in Las Vegas for many years and they destroy an old casino all the time.

It takes weeks and sometimes months of preparation to demolish even a 10 story building. Part of the process involves going into the buildings and cutting through key structural beams which is no easy task.

So you are saying they could do all this without people knowing in and coordinate 3 different explosions without drawing attention? Remember the main supports for the WTC are exoskeleton, so they would have to cut through beams all around the perimiter in offices where people are working and leave no trace of their work behind.

Congrats on passing the nutjob test.

8:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are, a moron.

11:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The demolition of a building using explosives is more of an art then a science. The pro's that are paid to do these tasks at times have failures intentionally demolishing a building even after weeks of preparation and analysis. To seriously think that a covert team could go in and place just the right amout of explosives in just the right locations without anyone seeing or knowing anything is just plain foolish. Also in even the smallest of implosions you can always clearly see the flashcord and demo charges popping and flashing bright light as they go off.

The fact of the matter is that we don't have enough empirical evidence of exactly what happens to a 100 story building when hit by a 200,000 lbs aircraft at 400 mph. All we can rely upon when dealing with such massive numbers and expensive components are to rely on statistical analysis. Before computers were around engineers ran these sorts of numbers by hand. Nowadays we have CPU's with trillions of operations a second at their disposal that can simulate numbers so precisely that, for example, we can simulate how to put spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and then turn around and actually do it using that simulated data.

Also to suggest that an entire city of people with countless cameras and camcorders from various angles and altitudes all recorded the same event at the same exact time and not one showing a discrepancy completely shoots any assertation out of the air that the buildings fell from any other reason then from aircraft impact and fire alone. Analysis of video and photgraphic data has even pinpointed the exact truss segment of the exoskeleton that buckled. Coincidentally, these segments that buckled were also photographed to be dripping molten material of some kind out from around these areas.

I can go on and on all day and end up with a post of factual evidence a mile long but I think we get the picture.

1:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you should give this website a little looksie...You should fit in quite nicely!! www.dumbasspeople.com I hear they welcome all kids of people!!

10:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think this dipshit might even be too dumb for dumbasspeople.com

11:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They shoud sue the engineers for not making the WTC Towers out of coathangers :)

12:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

8) Hey Spooky, those wirehangers would've been put to better use, had Yo Momma used them to abort her Spooky fetus!

LONG LIVE GEORGE W BUSH, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR (SAVIOUR, if you're Canadian!)

5:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ok....it wasn't really a good experiment....but what needs to be realized is that while it does takweeks/months to set up, Bushes youngest brother was head of security for the complex up untill the day of 9/11. about the exoskeletin,that is only half the story. What about the 47 supportbeams in the center? in 1975 the structure sustained a fire that raged over floors with no signs of weakness. And people don't have to burn holes through anything, Thermate does that quite well....and quite quickly. And the same can be said about WTC7. Debris may have caused fires.....but ALL the WTC buildings were over engineered. Building 7 had offices of major government angencies? Why on earth would they put important people/ documents in a building suceptable to fire? And even if the whole building was on fire....and even though large sections of the wall had collapsed....the steel frame work should have still stood. It has countless times through out history including in 1975 at the Towers.

4:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What about the heat generated from a fully fueled aircraft hitting it? Maybe you should have hit the steel structure with something before you set it a blaze... Either way these experiments will do nothing because the heat is not only generated by fire but also the impact of a large object.

11:43 PM  
Anonymous viagra online said...

I've read the experiment and it was an important effort. I really appreciated what you did and I will try with the same objective but with different elements.

4:03 PM  
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11:21 PM  

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