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Old 3rd Jul 2014, 13:17
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Read this NTSB report from the mid 70's regarding TWA flight 841. A 727 that fell from flight level 390. The old style flight recorder showed 6g and 470Kts at one point. I wouldn't want to test that in an Airbus.
I would not neither, but 6g alone does not mean anything for the load on the airframe, you need to know the weight of the airplane at that point in time. The certified g load is defined for maximum takeoff weight, at lower weight more g is possible, however 6g is quite a number.

Another extremely important aspect is, that the load is multiplied by a factor of 1.5, and not the material strength reduced by a factor of 1.5. What sounds equivalent at first, becomes relevant when we talk about stability (e.g. buckling) or internal loads of a deflected structure. An item loaded in bending and compression (e.g. members of an upper wing skin) sees more than 1.5 times the limit stress, when you load it to 1.5 times of limit load. The load stress relation becomes nonlinear if you take into account deformation, which occurs quite a bit on aircraft, as all of us have probably already seen.
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