I wonder what the vertical descent rate really was. I think we will do better to estimate velocity and calculate a probable acceleration rather than the other way round.
I am sure the velocity was substantial, but I'm having trouble envisaging 90-100 m/sec (post 2067, mm43). 1 km every 10 seconds? From cruise to sea-level in approx 100 seconds? The thing should have been slowing down if anything in the thicker atmosphere. That's faster then the terminal velocity for a dense object such as a skydiver. For an aerodynamic air-filled structure? Am I missing something here?
Assume 100m/sec. Assume cabin contents (including pax) decellerated to zero over maybe 10 m (combination of the hole in the water and collapse of the cabin floor into the hold). That is an average decelleration of 500m/sec/sec. Does the galley look like it took a force like this? I am not an engineer so am happy to be corrected. But it just doesn't look right to me.
The compression fractures of the spinal column associated with the fractures of the pelvis, observed on passengers seated throughout the cabin, are compatible with the effect, on a seated person, of high acceleration whose component in the axis of the spinal column is oriented upwards through the pelvis.
I am also wondering about the wording here. Does this really mean that they believe that the passengers recovered had to have been seated at impact. Does the bit "throughout the cabin" refer to seat allocation - are they implying that this force was applied to all the passengers (and hence the cabin was still in one piece) rather than the passengers were actually seating. And it is difficult to know what the injuries were and were not compatible with when we don't know the injuries. Maybe I am over-reading this, but the wording is a bit odd.