A quick lesson in failures in compression
Solid materials have a property called stiffness. A material can be strong and not-stiff. An example would be surgical tubing.
Even if you had perfectly straight pieces of surgical tubing it would not be possible to build a 300 foot tall skyscraper using it as structural members because they would buckle.
Tension tends to pull material into the line of force. Materials and shapes get stronger and stiffer under tension because of that tendency to align.
Compression tends to push material out of the line of force. Consider the saying "push a rope" and that will give you a mental image of what happens.
A beam under compression resists misalignment due to the stiffness of the material and its shape.
Side note: A steel measuring tape can be extended about three times farther if you extend it concave side up than it can be extended concave side down. That is because the edges are under compression when concave side down. There is also some geometric hocus-pocus about the edges being farther from the neutral axis than the center that contribute to the 3X phenomena.
Steel turns to bubblegum between 1100F and 1500F
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| Vertical axis is Young's Modulus (stiffness) of structural steel relative to room temperature. Horizontal axis is temperature in Celsius. 600C = 1100F 800C=1500F |
As a guy who has done his share of structural analysis, I don't find it odd that kerosene burning at 1500 degrees destroyed the World Trade Center. After all, the vertical beams that buckled were supporting the weight of about 300 feet of building above the crash zones and a temperature of 1000F would be sufficient to take down the building even if it had been over-designed by a factor of 2.0
Don't forget that fires get hotter with draft. Wood campfires often get hot enough to melt aluminum (1100 degrees, give or take), even though wood "doesn't burn that hot".
ReplyDeleteOkay, the first two towers are not the best example of delusional government lies. Let's assume that the entire plane at the Pentagon magically vaporized without leaving churned/scorched earth. What about the third tower? That alone screams "BS!". I don't pretend to know the truth, other than to know the gov story is on par with Kennedy's Magic Bullet Theory. Gulf Of Tonkin. USS Maine. Germans bayoneting Babies. Etcetera.
ReplyDeleteCan confirm Joe. My experience involves a crane and something that didn't fall over because I did exactly this math and we were safe as kittens. 'Nuff said on that.
ReplyDeleteGot nothing on building 3.
An untended wood fire can destroy an aluminum Dutch oven, we saw it at BSA summer camp. The staffers who sat fire watch when a troop was out on a day hike were told to make sure the fire didn't spread but otherwise leave it (and any cooking gear) strictly alone.
ReplyDeleteMore than one troop had a hungry night when their AL Dutch ovens turned to slag in the middle of the coals...