alt Hacker NewsThat's indeed a very naive conclusion. Once that bearing is gone the stress that it would normally allow to escape on account of rotation would be directly transferred to the metal around it and to the bolts holding the whole thing in place. Guess what broke first?
So if that bearing went that's not quite a smoking gun yet but it would definitely be a step closer to a root cause.
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> Once that bearing is gone the stress that it would normally allow to escape on account of rotation would be directly transferred to the metal around it
The bearing would have to sieze up and the bearing axle be locked to the race. There is some limit to rotational torque even with a siezed bearings.
Metaphor: arthritic joints are not smooth, but they will rotate if given enough torque.
From the images, it looks like the bearing had siezed. So presumably rotational vibration was transmitted to airframe and the vibration caused structural failure?
I'm assuming it is not an issue of extreme rotational torque causing the issue (and given it is a bearing the design is for very little torque there!)
IANAME (not a mech eng)
After watching the below video, it's the excess bearing play and thus no-longer-constrained force directions that would seem to be the issue.
With a proper tolerance bearing in place, the force is constrained so that other parts are only stressed in directions they're well suited to handle (because the bearing takes the load).
Once the bearing develops excess tolerance, you've got a bucking engine that (to your point) is directly loading other parts in unexpected ways/directions, eventually causing failure.
The fact that Boeing supposedly modeled this and came up with non-safety critical in the event of bearing breakage... curious how that will turn out.