I have not read it, I only knew of the jist of it, from where I don't recall.
There are certainly a lot of strange and conflicting forms of evidence about that event, and no doubt a lot of it is created just to distract and confuse anyone trying to figure it out.
She does have math in the book, among other things objecting to the collapse at free fall speed which should not be the case if energy from the fall is deposited into crushing the floors below.
Well, unless someone can show why 60 trillion joules of energy isn't enough to collapse a building, I'm not interested in chasing that cat. As near as I can find, the collapses took no more than 25 seconds. 60 trillion joules expressed in 25 seconds equates to a power input of 2.4 trillion watts. The electrical power generating capacity of the United States is about 45.6 billion watts. I'd like to know what wallplug her DEW is hooked up to. See, it is the basic arithmetic that is bypassed with these ideas. The idea is a non-starter.
I'm reading the book now so haven't gotten that far but I believe the answer to your question is that the process of weakening was achieved over the many hours prior to the collapse and then, thus weakened, the collapse was triggered perhaps by strategically pre-placed charges. I don't know what energy would be required to weaken the structure but it would not need to happen instantaneously and would not necessarily be proportional to the energy delivered in the collapse. So I am not sure your calculation is relevant.
The collapse had more than enough energy to drive it, so that issue is taken care of. The energy was released in the pulverization and expulsion of the structural material. (The effect she thinks required a DEW.) The calculation is relevant because she claims there was not enough energy for the collapse---but there is no credible way of showing that her theory could have been possible, since it would have implied the need for MORE energy than the collapse. Energy that would have been impossible to produce.
The collapse was not "triggered" by anything. It was the necessary event that happens when the imposed load exceeds the effective limit load of the weakened floor columns, however long it took. Under those circumstances, the column failures would occur at the speed of sound propagating through the columns, all of it in a small fraction of a second...far too small for the upper floors to tilt significantly. This would be effectively instantaneous. (Think of a graph of forces vs. time. The imposed load would be a horizontal line. The limit load would be a line that starts out far above the imposed load, but moves downward with time. When the limit load line crosses the imposed load line, the collapse happens. No trigger necessary.)
BTW, according to the seismic traces in this book, the collapse of each of the two towers took only about 10 seconds, not 25. However the same data shows WTC7 took 18 seconds to collapse, even though it was not nearly as tall. (Why did that one collapse anyway?)
If the columns failed as you describe, what was the cause for the failure? Was it a fire? Why did all of the columns fail at the same time - weren't there many of them in the core?
IIRC the NIST report said that the collapse started from a single floor slab, where the attachments to the columns were weakened by fire and let go, causing the rest to pancake.
If you do want the book it is also available on library genesis
https://libgen.is/search.php?req=Judy+Wood+&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=author
I used the first mirror
I have not read it, I only knew of the jist of it, from where I don't recall.
There are certainly a lot of strange and conflicting forms of evidence about that event, and no doubt a lot of it is created just to distract and confuse anyone trying to figure it out.
She does have math in the book, among other things objecting to the collapse at free fall speed which should not be the case if energy from the fall is deposited into crushing the floors below.
Well, unless someone can show why 60 trillion joules of energy isn't enough to collapse a building, I'm not interested in chasing that cat. As near as I can find, the collapses took no more than 25 seconds. 60 trillion joules expressed in 25 seconds equates to a power input of 2.4 trillion watts. The electrical power generating capacity of the United States is about 45.6 billion watts. I'd like to know what wallplug her DEW is hooked up to. See, it is the basic arithmetic that is bypassed with these ideas. The idea is a non-starter.
I'm reading the book now so haven't gotten that far but I believe the answer to your question is that the process of weakening was achieved over the many hours prior to the collapse and then, thus weakened, the collapse was triggered perhaps by strategically pre-placed charges. I don't know what energy would be required to weaken the structure but it would not need to happen instantaneously and would not necessarily be proportional to the energy delivered in the collapse. So I am not sure your calculation is relevant.
The collapse had more than enough energy to drive it, so that issue is taken care of. The energy was released in the pulverization and expulsion of the structural material. (The effect she thinks required a DEW.) The calculation is relevant because she claims there was not enough energy for the collapse---but there is no credible way of showing that her theory could have been possible, since it would have implied the need for MORE energy than the collapse. Energy that would have been impossible to produce.
The collapse was not "triggered" by anything. It was the necessary event that happens when the imposed load exceeds the effective limit load of the weakened floor columns, however long it took. Under those circumstances, the column failures would occur at the speed of sound propagating through the columns, all of it in a small fraction of a second...far too small for the upper floors to tilt significantly. This would be effectively instantaneous. (Think of a graph of forces vs. time. The imposed load would be a horizontal line. The limit load would be a line that starts out far above the imposed load, but moves downward with time. When the limit load line crosses the imposed load line, the collapse happens. No trigger necessary.)
Good luck with the book.
BTW, according to the seismic traces in this book, the collapse of each of the two towers took only about 10 seconds, not 25. However the same data shows WTC7 took 18 seconds to collapse, even though it was not nearly as tall. (Why did that one collapse anyway?)
If the columns failed as you describe, what was the cause for the failure? Was it a fire? Why did all of the columns fail at the same time - weren't there many of them in the core?
IIRC the NIST report said that the collapse started from a single floor slab, where the attachments to the columns were weakened by fire and let go, causing the rest to pancake.
It is definitely an interesting book.