The Sustainability of the Controlled Demolition Hypothesis for the destruction of the Twin Towers

Tony Szamboti Feb. 17, 2008

Mechanical Engineer

Abstract: In the past two years there has been an exponential growth in the number of people questioning the explanations we have been given, by official U.S. government bodies, concerning the collapses of the three WTC buildings in NYC on 9/11/2001. It is probably safe to say that much of this growth can be attributed to the Internet publishing of a paper by Physics Professor Steven Jones in November 2005, which put forth the hypothesis that the Twin Towers and WTC7 were actually demolished with pre- positioned cutter charges.3 This hypothesis is in tension with the present government explanation of impact damage and fires being the causes for the complete collapses of the buildings. My intent here is to show that any honest and objective look at all of the theories, for the destruction of the twin towers, including the present government explanation, will cause one to realize that only the controlled demolition hypothesis is sustainable. I believe an honest look at the evidence will convince anyone that the controlled demolition hypothesis provides the best explanation for the complete collapses of the towers, as well as the damage to the buildings and objects surrounding them. The remarkable collapse of WTC7 seems to have had a separate cause in its own controlled demolition. Video of the collapse of WTC7 can be viewed quickly at http://www.journalof911studies.com/beginners.html before continuing, as it plays a part in understanding what probably occurred in NYC on Sept. 11, 2001.

It can be shown that due to the design and volume of the towers, the aircraft impacts and fires could not have been enough to cause them to collapse. The link below will provide an idea of how the towers were constructed, with photos seen in articles from the Engineering News Record at the time they were built.

http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/eng-news-record.htm

The three points outlined below then need to be understood to follow this line of reasoning:

•The twin towers were designed to handle multiple loads: their own weight (dead loads), live loads (due to people, furnishings, and equipment), wind loads, ice loads, and seismic loads. The dead and live loads are normal gravity loads. The central core was designed to handle approximately 50% of the normal gravity loads of the building, with the perimeter structure designed to take the remaining 50% of the normal gravity loads, and all of the wind, ice, and seismic loads. While wind loads are usually quite low, tall structures need to be designed to handle extremes. The towers where designed to handle

the overturning moment and shear stress generated by 100 mph winds acting on their considerable surface area and height. 2 Although heavy icing would be rare, the towers would still need to withstand the extra weight, which glaze ice would bring at 56 lbs./ft3, not insignificant on a structure with approximately 1.3 million square feet of outside surface area. Seismic loads can generate horizontal accelerations, which would cause high overturn moments similar to those caused by high

wind loads. Due to the need to withstand rare high wind, ice, and seismic loads, the tower’s perimeter columns had a minimum factor of safety of 5.00, when considering normal gravity loads only.1 The

central cores were designed with a minimum factor of safety of 3.00, since they took normal gravity loads only.1 Prior to the attacks, on a low wind, warm sunny day, with no earthquakes, such as Sept. 11, 2001, the steel frame in each tower would have had no more than 25% of its total load sustaining capacity used.