framer;
Does a 37 degree pitch change in 5.8 seconds with an average speed of 223 kts equate to a g loading similar to the limiting figure of 2.5g that some have mentioned?
Perhaps what you're really asking is, was the aircraft's response limiting the ability to increase the 'g' load beyond the limit, possibly to avoid striking the water? How close the aircraft was to a tertiary stall would be one of the open questions of course.
Another point of view is, this is an interesting question because I believe it may touch upon a basic misconception of fbw and the 320 automation. The assumption may possibly be, the fbw automation will, through the flight controls, prevent a 2.5g load in all circumstances, (because that is the control law and that is what the system is designed to do).
At this point, we have an aircraft that is entirely out of control with, for reasons we do not fully understand yet, a THS angle of just above 11deg NU and a CAS of 263kts.
The key is in understanding that what the airplane was doing in pitch as a result of the 11+deg NU THS setting was, in the last 6 seconds or so, beyond the capability of the flight controls to counter regardless of the operating control laws and the flight control orders. This may be one interpretation of the L&R Elevator position parameter which, in the last 9 seconds or so is 12.5deg ND, perhaps, (we don't know) trying to counter the rising pitch and increasing 'g' load. At those speeds and pitch rates, the 'g' load would have been quite high I should think.
Both an acceleration rate and a pitch change in the time stated is obviously possible because that's what it did.
We do not know yet why the THS remained at it's last setting. From what I understand about the admittedly-rapidly changing events and circumstances, there were a few "windows" of possible response by the ELACs and SECs to begin reducing the THS setting. For whatever reason, that did not happen.
Clearly the airplane was responding, during the rapid, last dive, to the trim setting because the data shows that the nose was beginning to rise again, just as the aircraft struck the water.
It was mentioned in an earlier post that we don't know that the crew did not try to manually change the THS setting. I agree - we don't know that from the data that has been available to us all. We don't even know if the THS was not in some way jammed at it's last position and the crew tried very hard to move the manual trim wheel on the pedestal. The data shows no movement of the THS. We do know however, that, assuming a normally-operating THS, that it is manually, mechanically possible to change the trim setting. There is not enough data to conclude anything further.
Still thinking about this, however...