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BBC | The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower
This BBC documentary delves into the final mystery of 9/11: a third tower at the World Trade Centre, which along with the Twin Towers, also collapsed that day. But this skyscraper was never hit by a plane. Watch a preview online.
BBC | The Conspiracy Files
A BBC TV series exploring some of the conspiracy theories of modern times. Watch previews online.
BBC The Editors | Impossible Conspiracies
Series producer Mike Rudin wrote an online blog discussing The Conspiracy Files.
BBC The Editors | Controversy and conspiracies III
Online discussions about 9/11 conspiracies.
BBC Online | Timeline: WTC 7
Key events leading up to and following the collapse of the World Trade Centre Building 7.
FURTHER READING & ONLINE RESOURCES
Report: Fire, not bombs, leveled WTC 7 building | USA Today | 21 August 2008
Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories...
World Trade Center 7 Report Puts 9/11 Conspiracy Theory to Rest | Popular Mechanics | 21 August 2008
Conspiracy theorists have long claimed that explosives downed World Trade Center 7, north of the Twin Towers. The long-awaited report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conclusively rebuts those claims. Fire alone brought down the building, the report concludes, pointing to thermal expansion of key structural members as the culprit. The report also raises concerns that other large buildings might be more vulnerable to fire-induced structural failure than previously thought.
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report | Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
ABC Unleashed | Unanswered 9/11 questions | 16 May 2008
The September 11 attacks have joined the Kennedy assassination and the moon landings as a favourite for conspiracy theorists. Hereward Fenton is one of those who suspects a more complex explanation than an Al Qaeda plot to ram jet planes into buildings.
Revisiting 9/11/2001 - Applying the Scientific | April 2007
A scientific analysis by Dr. Steven E. Jones. [PDF 2.25Mb]
A physicist critiques Steven Jones' new paper | Stephen Phillips | May 2007
An article published online, May 21, 2007.
Who really blew up the twin towers? | The Guardian Online | 5 September 2006
As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 nears, Christina Asquith finds academics querying the official version of events.
Why the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Won't Go Away | Time Magazine | 3 September 2006
An article by Lev Grossman, published by Time, on why conspiracy theories are so seductive.
Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers | NIST | September 2005
In response to the World Trade Centre collapse, the National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted a 3-year building and fire safety investigation to study the factors contributing to the probable cause (or causes) of post-impact collapse of the WTC Towers (WTC 1 and 2) and WTC 7. Read their final report. [17.32Mb]
BBC Reports Live that WTC7 has fallen, yet it still stands | YouTube
This YouTube video shows a BBC report announcing the collapse of WTC7, whilst the building still stands in view.
The 9-11 Commission Report
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
CONSPIRACISTS, DEBUNKERS & GOVERNMENT LINKS
9/11 Commission
www.9-11commission.gov/
911 Myths
www.911myths.com/
9-11 Research
www.911research.wtc7.net/
9-11 Review: A Resource for Understanding the 9/11/01 Attack
www.911review.com/
911Truth.org
www.911truth.org/
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
www.ae911truth.org/
British 9/11 Truth Campaign
www.911truthcampaign.net/
Debunking 911
www.debunking911.com/
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Administration
www.fema.gov/
Journal of 9/11 Studies
A peer-reviewed, open-access, electronic-only journal, covering the whole of research related to the events of 11 September, 2001.
www.journalof911studies.com/
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Access all of the findings of the NIST on the World Trade Center investigation.
wtc.nist.gov/
NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology
wtc.nist.gov/
To support his claim that explosives were used to bring down the WTC towers, David Ray Griffin refers to the testimonies of eyewitnesses released by FDNY in August 2005.
People at the scene,[1] print journalists,[2][3][4] policemen,[5] firefighters,[6] and television news anchors Peter Jennings[7] and Dan Rather[8] have compared the process of the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings to that of a controlled demolition, or have reported explosions.
^Murphy, Dean E. (2002). September 11: An Oral History. New York: Doubleday.
"Terrorism in the US. Special Report". The Guardian. Sept. 12, 2001. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)content · cite
A story in the Guardian said that "police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a 'planned implosion.'"
Hagen, Susan; Carouba, Mary (2002). Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion. Indianapolis: Alpha Books. content · cite
Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of the south tower: "[I]t sounded like bombs going off. That's when the explosions happened. [...] I knew something was going to happen. [...] It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive explosion." Then, discussing her experiences during the collapse of the north tower, she said: "[There was] another explosion. That sent me and the two firefighters down the stairs. [...] I can't tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. [...] There was another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street."
Los Angeles Times. Sept. 12, 2001. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)content · cite
The day after 9/11, a story in the Los Angeles Times, referring to the south tower, said: "There were reports of an explosion right before the tower fell, then a strange sucking sound, and finally the sound of floors collapsing."
Murphy, Dean E. (2002). September 11: An Oral History. New York: Doubleday. content · cite
Multiple explosions were also reported by Teresa Veliz, who worked for a software development company in the north tower. She was on the 47th floor, she reported, when suddenly "the whole building shook. [...] [Shortly thereafter] the building shook again, this time even more violently." Then, while Veliz was making her way downstairs and outside: "There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. [...] There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run."
Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after seeing what appeared to be "individual floors, one after the other exploding outward," he thought: "'My God, they're going to bring the building down.' And they, whoever they are, had set charges. [...] I saw the explosions."
"[...] Black and gray clouds enveloped the buildings. An enormous rumble, described by one witness as sounding like thunder, only lasting longer, shook the ground. One of the buildings began to collapse. A few moments later, witnesses said, the top of the tower simply was not there. [...]
"I was sitting at my desk and heard the explosion and at first thought it was maybe the air conditioning ducts imploding or something. Then I heard people who were sitting by the window scream," Nessel said. "We saw things falling and thought it was debris but it wasn't. They were bodies."
Nessel hurried to his wife's office as one of the towers collapsed. [...]
"On the plaza, you could see all these bodies lying all over the place," Abel said. "The cops were like, 'Move it! Move it!' There's another explosion. I look back and I can see all this black smoke. I try to get into a police car, but I can't. I run into this building. I hear another boom. I can't believe it.""
"Unknown to the dozens of firefighters on the street, and those of us still in offices in the neighborhood, the South Tower was weakening structurally. Off the phone, and collecting my thoughts for the next report, I heard metalic crashes and looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, spewing glass and metal outward. One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces. It was the building apparently collapsing in on itself, pancaking to the earth."
"[...] The controlled-demolition theory is the sine qua non of the 9/11 movement — its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the 10,000-page investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers' structure, which eventually collapsed.
The movement's answer to that report was written by Steven E. Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University and the movement's expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones, unlike Alex Jones, is a soft-spoken man who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an account of the destruction of the towers (www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html) that holds that "pre-positioned cutter-charges" brought the buildings down. [...]
It would even seem the Truthers are not alone in believing the whole truth has not come out. A poll released last month by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" in the attacks. This is in addition to the Zogby poll two years ago that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that some leaders "knew in advance" that the attacks were planned and failed to act. [...]"
"[...] A Scripps Howard poll of July 2006 (which measured belief in a Kennedy conspiracy at 40 per cent) had 36 per cent of respondents suspecting government participation of some kind in the attacks, with just over one in six believing that explosives had been used to bring down the twin towers. A summary of what a made-it-happen-on-purpose 9/ll Truth activist is likely to believe goes something like this. Certain forces in the Bush Administration wanted a pretext to use overwhelming military force in the Caspian area and the Middle East, either to procure oil supplies, to weaken opposition to Israel or both. Accordingly they or their agents organised a false-flag operation, which would accomplish what Pearl Harbour was supposed to have accomplished for the Rooseveltian war party in 1941, causing a large number of Americans to die on the territory of the United States itself with the blame wrongly being put on Islamist extremists. The plot they devised involved three airliners being flown into the World Trade Centre main towers and, possibly, a Washington target.
There were either no hijackers or the ones on board were patsies, and two of the planes were guided remotely into the World Trade Centre. What brought the towers down, however was a “controlled demolition” using explosives planted there at some earlier time. The same devices also brought down the structure called World Trade Centre 7, though no plane flew into that building. The Pentagon was not hit by an airliner but by a guided missile. The fourth airliner, United 93, possibly heading for the capital, was either shot down because the passengers threatened to land it successfully thus exposing the plot, or else it was never found. Various ruses, including faked mobile phone calls and fraudulent claims of such calls were used to disguise the true nature of the crime.
That was the basic theory, although different people in the Truth movement might agree or disagree with various parts of it. To accept it, you have to believe that elements of the US Government engaged in a conspiracy of exceptional complexity and enormous risk of failure. [...]"
In 2007, a representative poll by Zogby International, commissioned by 911truth.org, found that 67% of Americans fault the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the collapse of World Trade Center 7.
Preliminary investigations did not include the mechanics of the actual collapse, concentrating instead on the events leading up to it. However, the final draft report on the collapse of WTC7 by NIST provides a detailed investigation into the collapse timeline, starting with the failure of a critical column, Column 79 (initial failure event). 6 seconds later, the collapse of the East Penthouse on the roof was visible. The collapse of the core columns progressed from east to west for another 6.9 seconds (12.9 seconds total since the initial failure event). At this point, the report says, "all the interior columns had buckled" and "the remaining exterior structure above began to fall vertically as a single unit." To calculate the timeline of the collapse of the rest of the building, NIST focused on the time between the initial collapse of the roofline and the last position that the complete roofline could be observed before portions of it started to become obscured by dust, at the top of Floor 29. NIST calculated the timeline for this observable descent as 5.4 seconds and calculated the theoretical free-fall time for the same portion of the building as 3.9 seconds, and concluded that, "The actual collapse time of the upper 18 floors of the north face of WTC7 (the floors clearly visible in the video evidence) was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This was consistent with physical principles."
In April 2009, Danish chemist Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and 8 other authors, published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'. The paper concludes that super-thermite chips were discovered in the dust. Four major Danish newspapers, as well as the Danish scientific journal Videnskab, reported on the publication.
Some of the steel from the Twin Towers was removed and sent to scrap yards before engineers were allowed access to the site on October 6, 2001. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author, has criticized the official response to the crime scene, saying that the cleanup process resulted in the destruction of most of the evidence, identifying the New York City Mayor's office as a key player in this regard.[1]
The debris removal process began shortly after the attacks, and concluded in May 2002.[2] Robert F. Shea of FEMA testified to the House of Representatives that, "Because of the importance of the rescue effort at the World Trade Center complex, it was clear that information would have to be gathered without interfering with response and rescue activities. Based on this fact, the FEMA-ASCE team first visited the site on October 6, [2001] but gathered information from others who had been on-site before this date."[3]
A call to action by Bill Manning, the chief editor of the trade journal Fire Engineering, is often quoted in this connection. In a January 2002 editorial, Manning called the early ASCE investigation (which would later turn into the FEMA building performance study) a "half-baked farce" and said that "the destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." He said that the cleanup of the WTC site differed in many respects from that of other engineering disasters.[4] In defense of the decision to dispose of the steel, Mayor Bloomberg said: "If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do."[5] David Ray Griffin notes that this is exactly what Manning had worried about when he warned that "the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper-and computer-generated hypotheticals.
However, allegations against a "speedy removal" of the steel hampering the engineering investigations appear to be unfounded, according to Dr. Gene Corley, head of the BPAT team and one of the lead engineers for the investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which began in September 2002. He testified to the House of Representatives in March 2002 that, "There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures".[3]
^Tarpley, Webster Griffin (2007-05-07). "Chapter VI: The Collapse of World Trade Center 1, 2, and 7". 9/11 Synthetic Terror (4th ed.). Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press. ISBN978-0930852375..
"[...] About 80% of the structural steel from the World Trade Center was scrapped without being examined by even one fire expert, mostly because investigators did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage as evidence, the experts said.
"The lack of significant amounts of steel for examination will make it difficult, if not impossible, to make a definitive statement as to the specific cause and chronology of the collapse," said Glenn Corbett, a fire science expert from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan who testified before a House Science Committee inquiry into the collapse and the ensuing investigation. [...]
The lead investigator in the case, Gene Corley of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said the Port Authority refused to hand over blueprints for the twin towers - crucial for evaluating the wreckage - until he signed a waiver saying his team would not use the plans in a lawsuit against the agency."
In defense of the decision to dispose of the steel, Mayor Bloomberg said: "If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do."[1] David Ray Griffin notes that this is exactly what Manning had worried about when he warned that "the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper-and computer-generated hypotheticals.
A call to action by Bill Manning, the chief editor of the trade journal Fire Engineering, is often quoted in this connection. In a January 2002 editorial, Manning called the early ASCE investigation (which would later turn into the FEMA building performance study) a "half-baked farce" and said that "the destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." He said that the cleanup of the WTC site differed in many respects from that of other engineering disasters.
Robert F. Shea of FEMA testified to the House of Representatives that, "Because of the importance of the rescue effort at the World Trade Center complex, it was clear that information would have to be gathered without interfering with response and rescue activities. Based on this fact, the FEMA-ASCE team first visited the site on October 6, [2001] but gathered information from others who had been on-site before this date."
[...]
However, allegations against a "speedy removal" of the steel hampering the engineering investigations appear to be unfounded, according to Dr. Gene Corley, head of the BPAT team and one of the lead engineers for the investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which began in September 2002. He testified to the House of Representatives in March 2002 that, "There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures".
GAITHERSBURG, Md. — [...] But the collapse of 7 World Trade Center — home at the time to branch offices of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service and the Giuliani administration’s emergency operations center — is cited in hundreds of Web sites and books as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower. [...]
But S. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, based here in the suburbs of Washington, also rejected that theory on Thursday, even as he acknowledged that the collapse had been something of a puzzle.
“Our take-home message today is the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” Dr. Sunder said at a news conference at the institute’s headquarters. “It did not collapse from explosives or fuel oil fires.” [...]
Conspiracy theorists have pointed to the fact that the building fell straight down, instead of tumbling, as proof that explosives were used to topple it, as well as to bring down the twin towers. Sixteen percent of the respondents in a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said it was very likely or somewhat likely that explosives were planted.
During the last four decades, other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems. But 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane, is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that in the rush to clean up the site, almost all of the steel remains of the tower were disposed of, leaving investigators in later years with little forensic evidence. [...]
The investigators determined that debris from the falling twin towers damaged structural columns and ignited fires on at least 10 floors at 7 World Trade Center, which stood about 400 feet north of the twin towers. But the structural damage from the falling debris was not significant enough to threaten the tower’s stability, Dr. Sunder said.
Normally, fireproofing on a skyscraper should have been sufficient to allow such a blaze to burn itself out and leave the building damaged but still standing. But investigators determined that the heat from the fire caused girders in the steel floor of 7 World Trade Center to expand. As a result, steel beams underneath the floors that provided lateral support for the tower’s structural columns began to buckle or put pressure against the vertical structural columns.
These fires might have been fed partly by the diesel from tanks and a pressurized fuel line, which were on the fifth to the ninth floors, Dr. Sunder said. But the analysis showed that even in the worst case, the diesel fuel-fed fire would not have burned hot enough or long enough to have played a major role in weakening the structure. The investigators determined that the fire that day was fed mainly by office paper and furnishings. [...]
Skeptics have questioned whether explosives were planted at the three towers at ground zero, and at the Pentagon as well, often contending that the Bush administration had planned the catastrophes to provide a justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. What started as a small number of such conspiracy theorists ballooned into a movement of sorts, largely fed by Internet sites and homemade videos.
Dr. Sunder said the investigators considered the possibility that explosives were used, but ruled it out because the noise associated with such an explosion would have been 10 times louder than being in front of the speakers at a rock concert, he said, and detectable from as far as a half a mile away. He said that interviews with eyewitnesses and a review of video taken that day provided no evidence of a sound that loud just before the collapse.
The skeptics — including several who attended Thursday’s news conference — were unimpressed. They have long argued that an incendiary material called thermite, made of aluminum powder and a metal oxide, was used to take down the trade center towers, an approach that would not necessarily result in an explosive boom. They also have argued that a sulfur residue found at the World Trade Center site is evidence of an inside job.
Dr. Sunder said the investigators chose not to use the computer model to evaluate whether a thermite-fueled fire might have brought down the tower, since 100 pounds of it would have had to have been stacked directly against the critical column that gave way, which he said they did not believe had occurred.
To the skeptics, it was a glaring omission.
“It is very difficult to find what you are not looking for,” said Shane Geiger, who contributes to a Web site that follows the topic and who had come to Maryland from Texas to quiz Dr. Sunder about his findings, with a bumper sticker on his laptop computer that says, “9-11 was an inside job.” [...]
Within moments after the news conference ended, leaders of a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth held their own telephone conference briefing, dismissing the investigation as flawed.
“How much longer do we have to endure the coverup of how Building 7 was destroyed?” said Richard Gage, a California architect and leader of the group. [...]
Tarpley, Webster Griffin (2007-05-07). "Chapter VI: The Collapse of World Trade Center 1, 2, and 7". 9/11 Synthetic Terror (4th ed.). Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press. ISBN0930852370. content · cite
Some of the steel from the Twin Towers was removed and sent to scrap yards before engineers were allowed access to the site on October 6, 2001. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author, has criticized the official response to the crime scene, saying that the cleanup process resulted in the destruction of most of the evidence, identifying the New York City Mayor's office as a key player in this regard.
She also gave a speech on the floor of the Arizona Senate that included her support for the demolition theory, its proponents, and its relevance to current foreign policy in the US. Johnson said in her speech:
You don’t have to embrace every theory about 9/11. Indeed, there are some that should be soundly rejected. But if you believe, as these scientists, architects and engineers do, that the buildings were brought down by explosive demolition, then you must also agree that we need a new investigation. I have no preconceived notions about who did it and I am not pointing the finger of blame at anyone. But I do think that the worst attack on U.S. soil in American history deserves the best investigation possible.
In June 2008, Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson delivered a letter to the office of U.S. Senator John McCain asking him to meet with a group of professionals to discuss the events of 9/11.
Criticism of the NIST report
Text
Text as of April 24, 2009
The controlled demolition theory is also offered to explain a belief that the towers collapsed close to free fall speed. Most estimates agree that the structures offered little resistance to the progress of the collapses and that they took about 50% longer than a free falling object dropped from the tops of the towers. Without explosives to destroy the internal support structure of the WTC towers, argue proponents of controlled demolition, the fall of the towers would violate the principle of conservation of momentum.[1][2] Others say that these claims are only supported by intuition without any quantitative analysis. They point to their own analyses posted on a website suggesting that the fall may be explained without violating the principle of conservation of momentum and without requiring any explosives.[3][4]
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed.
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed.
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed.
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed.
Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed.
Following the NIST final draft on Building 7 in August 2008, a group of demolition proponents submitted a response challenging several points of the draft.
Because of its highly increased reaction rate, nanosized thermitic materials are being researched by the U.S. military with the aim of developing new types of bombs that are several times more powerful than conventional explosives.
"Reactive mixtures of aluminum (Al) and Teflon have applications in propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics. This study examines the thermal degradation behavior of Teflon and nanometer scale Al particles compared with micron-scale Al particles. Differential scanning calorimetry and thermo-gravimetric analyses were performed in an argon environment on both nanometer and micron scale mixtures revealing lower onset temperatures and larger exothermic activity for the nanometer scale Al mixture. A pre-ignition reaction (PIR) unique to the nano-Al mixture is found. Experiments show the mechanism of the PIR to be the adsorption of fluoride ions from the Teflon polymer onto the aluminum oxide shell of the Al particles. The decreased alumina surface area inherent in larger Al particles lowers the exothermic effect of the PIR. The PIR may be the mechanism of ignition for nano-composite samples heated in air. Experimental results are discussed along with reviewed literature to explain the thermal degradation process of the mixtures. These results are helpful in the fundamental understanding of Al/Teflon degradation and particle size effects on the reactivity of Al/Teflon composites.
The effects of Teflon particles on the sensitivity of thermite composites are also studied experimentally using a drop-weight apparatus. It was found that the addition of Teflon to an Al/MoO3 thermite composite increases its sensitivity to impact."
"[...] Teflon is an ingredient that differs fundamentally from traditional oxidizers due to the fluorine content of the material. Teflon has been studied as an energetic component in micron-scale heterogeneous composites for some time; however, recent advances in technology have enabled the availability of nano-scale Al and Teflon particles, allowing for the study of such components in energetic applications. [...]
However, recent studies by Levitas et al. (2005) have revealed an alternate mechanism involved with nano-particle Al oxidation based on the tremendous mechanical stresses on the oxide shell unique to nano-particle Al. The stresses are brought about from the difference in thermal expansion between Al and Al2O3, and the enormous pressure of the interior molten Al. [...]
Poehlein et al. (2001) found that replacing various amounts of Mg in the Mg/Teflon/Viton (MTV) mixture with Alex (a nano-Al powder produced by the wire explosion process) resulted in higher burn rates and found that the total fuel loading of MTV may be reduced while maintaining burn rates similar to conventional fuel rich compositions without Alex. [...]
A Department of Defense newsletter (Miziolek, 2002) recently identified nano-particle Al/Teflon as a metastable intermolecular composite (MIC) that has received considerable attention and defined MIC as, “mixtures of nanoscale powders of reactants that exhibit thermite (high exothermicity) behavior.” [...]
Al/Teflon produces a higher heat of combustion than the conventional solid propellant mixture AP-HTPB-Al (ammonium perchlorate oxidizer, hydroxy terminated polybutadiene binder, and Al fuel), determined by Tachibana and Kimura (1988) to be 8420 J/g and 5870 J/g, respectively. Also, Al/Teflon exhaust has a very low molecular weight, consisting of primarily AlF3 (84 amu) and carbon. Koch (2002) stated that metal/fluorocarbon propellant systems have products (metal-fluorides) in the vapor phase at combustion temperatures in contrast to metal oxides in conventional propellants, and this adds to the specific impulse of the fuel. [...]
With 13 out of 15 of the thermite/Teflon pellets having a successful ignition event, it is established that a thermite pellet can ignite under drop weight conditions."
^Cite error: The named reference JonesWhyCollapse was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
