| > The wings are so utterly critical to flight I can’t possibly imagine any situation they’d be engineered to snap off under. I don't know enough about the details of the CRJ-900 to say for certain, but in general aerospace engineering does include considerations of this sort, where if a component breaks off you want to ensure that it separates in a specific way. from an Admiral Cloudberg article [0] about El-Al 1862 [1]: > The Boeing 747 engine pylon is attached to the wing by four fittings: one at the front, one in the back, and two in the middle (or midspar). Each of these fittings consists of a wing-mounted male lug and a pylon-mounted female lug, which are connected by a fuse pin. The four fuse pins are the weakest part of the pylon, but this is by design. Every airplane system and structure contains planned failure sequences which work to minimize damage in the event of an overload. In the case of the 747’s engine pylons, the fuse pins were designed to fail at a lower load threshold than the fittings themselves, ensuring that if the engine is torn off the wing — perhaps due to extreme turbulence, or a gear-up landing — the fuse pins will fail first, causing the engine to separate cleanly without ripping open the fuel tanks located directly above it. In theory, this should allow an engine to break off upon reaching its design load limit without starting a fire or otherwise compromising the plane’s ability to fly. 0: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/concrete-and-fire-the-cr... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862 |