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Gravity will cause acceleration of an object as it falls. This is basic physics. Maybe this caused the acceleration before impact?
(In physics, gravitational acceleration is the acceleration on an object caused by force of gravitation. Neglecting friction such as air resistance, all small bodies accelerate in a gravitational field at the same rate relative to the center of mass.[1] This equality is true regardless of the masses or compositions of the bodies.
At different points on Earth, objects fall with an acceleration between 9.78 and 9.83 m/s2 depending on altitude and latitude, with a conventional standard value of exactly 9.80665 m/s2 (approximately 32.174 ft/s2). Objects with low densities do not accelerate as rapidly due to buoyancy and air resistance.)
I'm just trying to make sense of this..... Any help is appreciated.
Gravity causes a downward acceleration, not a forward one. A high rate of speed straight down would imply either a stall, (extremely low forward speed), spin, or abrupt nose down pitch. In all of these cases, the wreckage would be constrained to a rather small area, which is not consistent with the wreckage path as described in the narrative. The investigators will look not only at the tops of the trees along the impact path, the length of the debris field, but also how the parts of the aircraft failed, as a high rate of speed impact in a forward direction has many characteristic signatures. Originally Posted by Kepi
Yes, this case is under litigation and the loss of engine power from failure of the of the power turbine wheels is irrefutable. The compression turbine wheel was intact.Gravity will cause acceleration of an object as it falls. This is basic physics. Maybe this caused the acceleration before impact?
(In physics, gravitational acceleration is the acceleration on an object caused by force of gravitation. Neglecting friction such as air resistance, all small bodies accelerate in a gravitational field at the same rate relative to the center of mass.[1] This equality is true regardless of the masses or compositions of the bodies.
At different points on Earth, objects fall with an acceleration between 9.78 and 9.83 m/s2 depending on altitude and latitude, with a conventional standard value of exactly 9.80665 m/s2 (approximately 32.174 ft/s2). Objects with low densities do not accelerate as rapidly due to buoyancy and air resistance.)
I'm just trying to make sense of this..... Any help is appreciated.
When an aircraft is climbing, it is at a high angle of attack, creating significant drag, if one is to suddenly fail the engine, the airspeed drops fast, in nearly every case where someone is not expecting this to happen, a significant loss of airspeed is to be expected, if the pilot is proficient, this can usually be quickly recovered, but at only 260', it's going to be difficult to get the speed back to around 90 (close to best glide speed for a caravan) before reaching the ground level. Enough control should be able to be maintained to choose a flight path, but this can be much easier in training environments when you are expecting it rather than when out in the industry "on the job". This sudden loss of airspeed is one of the primary reasons why most instructors reinforce not turning back towards the airport, at least until significant altitude is achieved, as your aircraft is simply in too low of an energy state to be attempting a turn without stalling/spinning or reaching the ground even earlier.
The glide distances and capabilities are not unknown, using the lift coefficient of the wing design and other factors, it can be calculated what the maximum glide distance of the aircraft would be at 260'. If the pilot chose to push the nose down and accelerate to a faster speed, the aircraft would not glide as far. If power was present, the aircraft would be able to glide further and/or maintain a totally different glide path. As I mentioned before, extensive modeling and simulation is used to determine this.
It is not surprising that the PT6 centrifugal compressor wheel (this is what you mean, correct?) remained intact, that's one of the stoutest parts of the engine/aircraft, usually a pretty big/thick chunk of metal. One thing to remember is that any turbine engine is spinning at massive RPMs, so when a catastrophic event is introduced, it's going to tear itself apart. As you may be indicating, the key is to determine if this was casual or a result of other damage.