Some Reflections On Molten Steel, Probability of finding molten steel weeks after 9/11 Options

[hiram]

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Some reflexions on molten steel

This little paper tries to examine the possibility of finding "molten metal" (steel) in the rubble heap at Ground Zero several weeks after 9/11.

Let us start with the postulate that red hot steel (some say it was in a molten state) was found in the debris of the WTC.

It has been established by numerous authors and NIST itself that the fires in the towers where not able to melt steel.

Most used proposition : someone managed to put energetic Thermic Devices which did melt part of the supporting framework and helped cause the ruin of the buildings.
The so-called Thermite-Thermate theory.

The following computations are for a rought quantification and don't pretend at any real description of what happened.
I suppose that Thermic Devices were used to cut the 47 core columns on each floor above ground, not necessarily the best choice but convenient and rather unconspicuous for this purpose. Unless they were molten-steel addicts it was not useful nor wise for the "perps" to melt too much steel .

For 1 tower, metric units (comma for decimals, dot for thousands)

How much molten steel ?
Total mass of Core Columns (CC) steel 22.929.000 kg
Number of floors 116
Mean mass of CC /floor : 22.929.000 kg / 116 = 197.663,7931 kg
(Sections of columns vary from bottom to top of the towers but for my purpose it's enough).

Mean volume of CC /floor : 197.663,7931 kg / 7.850 kg/m³ = 25,1801 m³
(at a steel density of 7.850 kg/m³)

Let us suppose the "cut" was 2 cm wide (@ 0,78 inch), this makes :
(25,1801 m³ / 3,6576 m) x 0,02 m = 0,1377 m³ of molten steel /floor
(3,6576 m is 12 ft, mean floor height)

Let us suppose that columns from floor 3 to 110 were cut, this gives a total
of 0,1377 m³ x 107 = 14,7325 m³ molten steel by tower. (1) (@ 520,58 cu ft) or
14,7325 m³ x 7.850 kg/m² = 115.650,125 kg (2)

What amount is it ?
For visualisation purpose I suppose that all molten steel somewhat managed to go in the foundations and :

a- molten steel pools in a zone equal to the core area (@ 1.111 m²), this makes :
14,7325 m³ (1) / 1.111 m² = 0.0133 m (0.5221 in) or a steel plate @ ½ inch thick and 12.000 sq ft

or

b- molten steel flows at the foot of each column and covers 20 m² (215,2782 sq ft),
this makes :

The section of the exterior 23 CC was @ 2 x that of the 24 interior CC, this gives a respective weight of 0,6571 for Ext CC and 0,3429 for Int CC.

Ext CC : (14,7325 m³ (1) x 0,6571) / 23 columns / 20 m² = 0,021 m (0,8286 in)
23 steel plates, 0,83 in thick, 215 sq ft
Int CC : (14,7325 m³ (1) x 0,3429) / 24 columns / 20 m² = 0,0105 m (0,4143 in)
24 steel plates 0,41 in thick, 215 sq ft

or

c- all molten steel flows inside the columns and fills their bottom. (In fact impossible, there are baseplates !) Let's take a heavy one as if the "pipe" was continuous: Exterior section : 52"x24"x7"
Interior section : 38"x10" or 0,2452 m²
This fills:
(14.7325 m³ (1) x 0.6571) / 23 / 0,2452 m² = 1,7169 m or 5,633 ft or
1,7169 m x 0,2452 m² x 7.850 kg/m³ = 3.304,2785 kg (@ 3,6423 tons)

What do we see ?
As we can infer from the numerous photographs and videos which depict more or less accurately the removal of the WTC debris, none of the 3 cases here before mentionned happened. Despite someone said he saw "metal flowing like in a foundry" and another "they showed us fascinating slides…"which we didn't see, nobody found or came with evidence of heavy metal plates, columns filled with molten steel or sizable metal blobs. (You can also imagine other means of disposing of molten steel.) We are shown basically the same 4 or 5 rather bad photographs, and one video of flowing molten metal. By contrast, a lot of crisp photograps show core columns with no trace of melting and still straight as if they snapped like bamboo sticks.
One can suppose there exist more visual evidences of molten metal but they are not in the public.
Steel cools
Molten metal was thus dispersed in the whole rubble and put some compressed furniture and a lot of plastics to a smoldering fire and began to cool.

How long ?

The computation of the energy balance of this catastrophic event ( WTC + Planes ) can be summarized as such :
WTC : Potential energy (partially transformed in heath following deformations of components) and thermic energy (calorific load of building and contents for the parts that were on fire.)
Planes : Cinetic energy (partially transformed in heath) and thermic energy (mostly jet fuel).
Thermic Devices of unknown make and power.
The heath that wasn't evacuated in the atmosphere (hot gases, smoke, dust, radiation) landed on GZ.
For more on this, see <http://www.takeourworldback.com/911/> (3). No author cited, too bad.

For tower 1 which burned longer, the part that was on fire was @ 10% of the whole. I suppose, for simplification sake, that it reached a uniform temperature of 300 °c at the moment of collapse. Refering to the above declarations on hot metal, it was found everywhere in the rubble heap, this leads to believe that the debris were more or less mixed. (I found nothing on that subject on the net.) After a while, if the accumulated heath had been "equalized" by conduction – radiation. An estimate of the resulting t° can be roughly calculated :
Normal t° : 25 °c
(573 °K x 10 + 298 °K x 90) / 100 = 325,5 ° K or 27,5 °k above normal

To be in accord with the postulated Thermite scenario, I must add the heath it produced.
Mass of molten steel : 115.650,125 kg (2) at 1700 °c (no mean to guess a better estimate)
to be mixed with 247.966.800 kg (mass above ground of 1 tower) at 25°c
(1973 °K x 115.650 + 298 °K x 247.966.800) / (247.966.800 + 115.650 ) = 298,8 °K or 0,8 °K above normal (given this feeble supplement, different specific heath omitted) rounded at 1° K.
Other source of heath comes from the kinetic energy of the falling building, I found an estimation in the above paper (3), probably overstated (it takes the whole height of the WTC for the fall instead of the centre of gravity.) let us round it at 5 °K.

Total augmentation of t° : 27,5 + 1 + 5 = 33,5 °K above 25°c

Obviously, it went not so, heath didn't spread evenly and there were hot spots but this level of mean t° shows how far we are from finding steel melting by virtue of residuous heath.

What couldn't melt steel in the fires cannot do it later if you don't bring a lot of oxygen or an outer source of energy.

Molten steel solidifies
In the above "idealized" © case, I got a 3.304 kg , 1,72 m high column of molten steel (highly improbable). How much time to solidify ?

I found on the internet a paper by V.Grozdanic (3 dimensional math model of the solidification of a large steel ingot) in which he calculates the striping time (when the metal is cool enough to be lifted out of its mold). The ingot had a 1.2 m diameter and a 3 m lenght, weighted 20 metric tons. The striping time was 12,5 hours.

If a 20 t ingot is sufficiently rigid to be lifted after 12.5 hour, how can molten steel continue to flow after weeks ?

Another article by D.A. Litvinenko (Improvement of the technology of cooling of rolled material suceptible to flake formation) in which the author studies the rate of cooling and the means to use to avoid defaults. The rate of cooling for blooms (section 190x220 mm, equivalent to a WF 14x16-219 lbs/ft ) covered with a 5 cm thick sand layer is between 6 and 12 c°/hour.
Let us take a cooling rate of 9 °c/hour; it makes 9 °c x 24 h = 216 °c/day. After 3 days, such a bloom loses 648 °c.
If we start with a very hot bloom e.g. at 2.000 °c, after 3 days it comes to 1.352 °c, still very hot but well below solidification point.
Ramblings on Thermic Devices
To stay in line with my postulate, there remains the possibility of a differed activation of some misfired Thermic Devices inside the rubble heap, but were the temperatures high enough to ignite the compound ? (Prof.Jones states that Thermite ignites above 900 °c)

The above computation uses a rather modest "cut" trough the columns. Provided a more generous use of Thermic Devices one could have obtained bigger "ingots" hence a longer solidification time, the "perps" could have overdone it, just to be sure …

By the way, if I can read a paper by Mr Jerry Lobdill "Some Physical Chemistry Aspects of Thermite …" it states on page 8 that 1gr of thermite can cut (melt) 1,68 gr of steel at 1700 °c

Steel cut/tower 115.650,125 kg (2 cm wide) (2)
Weight thermite : 115.650,125 kg / 1,68 = 68.839,36 kg to be divided in 47x 107 = 5.029 charges (individual loads vary) if you decide to chop all core columns.

One of the difficulties to place the charges out of view is to find access to some core columns and in the case of bulkier Thermic Devices (by comparison with Linear Shaped Charges). The presence of thick plaster boards and/or fire proofing complicate their correct placement. Such a "Thermite Op" must have taken a lot of resources and a rather long time.


Conclusion : in spite of the studies of Prof. Jones and others, the testimonies of various persons, some aspects of the "Thermite theory" seem hard to explain. The scientific approach of Prof. Jones is beyond my scope and I can't or will not contest it. There remains a lot of facts to explain.



January 2009 - Rev1

Joseph Bodart

[DoYouEverWonder]

Just wondering what folks here think of this picture.

http://bocadigital.smugmug.com/gallery/270.../10697258/Large

It is one of the few that I've ever seen, that shows evidence of steel that had been melted to a liquid state.

Plus one more interesting image, where this section of GZ looks more like a barbeque pit then a pile of steel. Apparently, the steel they are pulling out is still hot enough that they are hosing down the grapple to cool the steel down.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/p...vate7.jpg?sdfew

[hiram]

Just wondering what folks here think of this picture.

It is one of the few that I've ever seen, that shows evidence of steel that had been melted to a liquid state.

Plus one more interesting image, where this section of GZ looks more like a barbeque pit then a pile of steel. Apparently, the steel they are pulling out is still hot enough that they are hosing down the grapple to cool the steel down.

Thanks DoYou and Paul for the interesting pictures.

Picture with the dog: If we take the date for true, its an early photograph of GZ but (that's a general remark) you never know over what and when the cutters operated.
The rectangular cut in what seems to be a box column is indeed man made(for what purpose ?). The line running from the cut seems to be an assembly of 2 steel plates either not welded or unwelded.
The long side of the web seems also to have been teared along a rather thin weld.
In the background, the end of the box column shows traces of thermal cutting (?)
In opposite to a widely purported claim, you can identify many objects (carpeting, wires, a plastic grid) and a lot of dirt (light concrete, gypsum panneling...all was not pulverized)

Picture with the yellowish jagged edge : IMHO it looks more like the effect of chemical corrosion than of melting. Melted steel is often darker and the edges are a bit rounded. I associate it with the pictures and comments by Prof. Astaneh.

Hiram

[DoYouEverWonder]

Thanks DoYou and Paul for the interesting pictures.

Picture with the yellowish jagged edge : IMHO it looks more like the effect of chemical corrosion than of melting. Melted steel is often darker and the edges are a bit rounded. I associate it with the pictures and comments by Prof. Astaneh.

Hiram

What kind of chemical can cut through steel, especially a piece as big as this one?

I would guess the damage was done relatively recently, since it's still all bright and shiny. Wouldn't it turn rust colored within even just a few weeks, especially in the salty air around lower Manhattan?