Although the jet fuel fires have been ruled out as the cause of the collapses, it should still be pointed out that the fuel capacities of the Boeing 707 and the Boeing 767 are essentially the same. And in any case, it has been estimated that both UA Flight 175 and AA Flight 11 were carrying about 10,000 gallons of fuel when they impacted. This is well below the 23,000 gallon capacity of a Boeing 707 or 767. Thus the amount of fuel that exploded and burnt on September 11 was envisaged by those who designed the towers. Consequently, the towers were designed to survive such fires. It should also be mentioned that other high-rise buildings have suffered significantly more serious fires than those of the twin towers on September 11, and did not collapse.
The «Truss theory» is ludicrous
The truss theory is the absurd belief that the only support (between the central core and the perimeter wall) for the concrete floor slabs, was lightweight trusses. It was invented to explain away what were obviously demolitions and has become the «official» dogma. The central core, perimeter wall and the mythical trusses are all introduced in the next section. There you will find out their dimensions, their numbers and their supposed usage. After reading the rest of this article you should return to this section and (with improved understanding) read it again.
According to the «official» story, there is no significant lateral support for the walls (against wind loading) between the ground and top floors. This is like a bridge with a 1,300 foot span between supports. Even though the tube structure of the perimeter wall was designed for maximum rigidity (within the given weight specifications) the 1,300 foot span between supporting pillars, meant that even this very rigid design would sag in the midsection under wind loading, just like a bridge with such a span. In a typical steel framed building the span between pillars is only 12 feet (one floor) and such a problem does not arise.
The World Trade Center towers were like huge sails in the wind. These sails had to be able to resist the 140 mile per hour winds of a hurricane. Such hurricane force winds exerted a large (some 6000 tons) lateral force on the building. This lateral force is called the wind loading (or force of the wind) on the building. According to the «official» story, the only possible intermediate support comes from the flimsy trusses and the lightweight concrete floors. The WTC was designed to survive a 45 pounds per square foot, wind loading. This translates to a 12 x 207 x 45/2000 = 56 ton force on each of the floor segments. What this 56 ton force on each floor segment means, is that if one was to lay the World Trade Center on its side and use the pull of gravity as a substitute for the push of the wind, then each of the 110 floors would need to be loaded with a 56 ton block of steel (so the entire wall would have to support 110 such blocks of steel, that is, 110 x 56 = 6160 tons in total).
The fact that the tubular structure of the walls is very rigid, does not stop the central core from needing to bend when the walls bend. This means that the walls have to transmit the full force of the wind to the core, so that the core will flex to the same extent as the walls (this is obvious, otherwise if the walls flex while the core does not, the floor slabs would, by definition, be crushed). Again, it is important to note that the rigidity of the walls does not protect the central core from the full force of the wind, what it does, is it limits the distance that the walls (and hence the whole structure) can bend. The more rigid the design the less it tilts in the wind.
In strong winds the midsection of the windward wall will be pushed several feet towards the core. In a typical steel framed building of WTC type design, heavy steel beams transmit the wind loading to the core, which then bends together with the walls. However, in the WTC (as described in the «truss theory») the trusses and floor slabs are too weak to transmit this force to the core without buckling, so the core will stay in its original position as the wall advances to it. This will crush the trusses and floor slabs, leading to the collapse of many floors. Since this did not occur during the 30 years in which the buildings stood, we must assume that the «official» story is false. To see how utterly ridiculous the «official» story is, lets calculate the lateral loading (wind loading) that each one of these trusses was expected to resist. Consider, a one floor segment. Here, we have 30 trusses and a slab of concrete supporting 56 tons. That is about 2 tons per truss and piece of slab. If you balanced a 2 ton block of steel on top of one of these flimsy 60 foot long trusses and (a 60 foot long by 6 foot 8 inches wide by 4 inches thick) slab of concrete, we all know what would happen — the truss and slab would buckle and collapse.
Another point to consider, is that if the walls alone handle lateral loading, then the pressure on the windward wall must be transmitted via the corners to the remaining walls (this transmission of loading to the other walls is what gave the WTC its rigidity) but corners are far too weak to handle this task alone.
Although the «truss theory» is ludicrous, it has been pushed by many «experts». It should be noted that it is inconceivable that these experts did not know that it was false.
Where is the steel?
Since the trusses are incapable of resisting the wind loading, we know that the «official» explanation of the WTC collapse is false. If the floor joists (supports) were not the claimed trusses, then what were they? They had to be strong enough to support the floor slab and stiff enough to resist the wind loading. In fact, they had to be large steel beams. This is not to say that trusses were not used at all in the construction, but just that (contrary to the «official» line) the main floor joists were steel beams and not trusses.
The above argument using wind loading is certainly enough to tell one that trusses were not really used as the floor joists, but there are also other ways to determine this. Another approach is adopted in this section. We will:
• Calculate the weight of steel theoretically used in the construction of one of the towers assuming that the floor joists were trusses.
• Compare the result of this calculation to the 96,000 tons of steel known to have been used in the construction of each of the towers.
• Note that the calculated weight of steel is only 67 percent of the required 96,000 tons.
• Conclude that the 32,000 tons of steel unaccounted for, is due to the fact the the floor joists were actually weighty steel beams and not flimsy trusses (and thus that the official story is a lie spun to explain away what were obviously demolitions).
• Calculate a rough cross-sectional area for the steel beams that did serve as floor joists.
Since a cubic foot of steel weights 490 pounds, it is enough to deal with volumes rather than weights. We will calculate the volume of steel on a per floor basis.
To calculate the per floor volume of steel used in the construction of the twin towers, we will divide the calculation into three parts, namely, the volume of steel in the perimeter wall, the volume in the central core and the volume used in the floor support system.
The perimeter wall was comprised of box columns welded to large spandrel plates. Two typical prefabricated sections are illustrated below. Each consists of three spandrel plates welded to three box columns and each is
