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Old 28th Feb 2010, 21:37
  #355 (permalink)  
Donkey497
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Oil Capital of Central Scotland
Age: 56
Posts: 486
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FWIW.......

About the only thing which might be capable of resurfacing after a trip to the bottom would be something in the fuel system which hadn't been ruptured by the impact. However. it's fairly unlikely that anything forming an envelope filled with fuel would survive an impact without damage to the seal integrity.

Although a vessel which is 100% liquid filled would not be crushed (as much) as the remainder of the debris, it would need to form an unbrella shape to trap the less dense & relatively incompressible fuel at the top of the shape & keep its centre of gravity below the centre of the volume of fuel (centre of bouyancy).

I doubt any of the big tanks would fit the bill in this case as they'd be too full of fuel & too heavy this early into the flight to be sufficiently robust or flexible enough. At best maybe a fuel filter or something similar might be a possibility but it'd be remote.
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