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To: DugwayDuke
One wonders if something like this might have happened. The aircraft encountered the wake and the data recorders measured the 0.3 to 0.8 acceleration. This acceleration is insufficient to cause separation of the stabilizer and is consistent with other information about how the vortex may tend to throw the aircraft out of the wake. However, the vortex impinging upon the rudder caused it to begin to oscillate. The computer read this as some kind of unusual situation and began to send a series of counter commands at high rate. This might cause a high amplitude, high frequency vibration to be transmitted to the structure connecting the stabilizer to the tail inducing a failure in these connectors. There could even be some kind of a feed back loop that might persist after the aircraft exited the wake. In effect, what I'm saying is that the computer might have gone nuts when it encountered something outside it's program.

Worth a bump. After all, both engines came off as well as the tail, and eyewitnesses described the plane as "wobbling" in the air. There seem to be few if any precedents for a commercial airliner coming so completely unglued. A violent, computer-driven oscillation certainly seems like a possibility.

346 posted on 11/16/2001 1:20:40 PM PST by Interesting Times
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To: Interesting Times
You are very close.

Like I said earlier, the Vertical Stabilizer controls the vertical axis. When the aircraft lost it, it went into a condition of "positive static instability" The engines aggrivated that condition.

The oscillations were from wing forward/rearward pivoting on the center of gravity of the fusalage.(witnesses reported the wings as moving rapidly forward and backward from the ground before it broke apart)

Oscillations will increase in magnitude and frequency when positive static instability is present.

(Just basic physics 101) The engines fell off because the struts could not handle the stress the oscillations......

358 posted on 11/16/2001 1:20:51 PM PST by PSYCHO-FREEP
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