Posted by Matt Wilson on Thursday, July 24, 2003 at 12:55PM :
In Reply to: Axle scoring to direct breakage? posted by Scott W on Thursday, July 24, 2003 at 12:20PM :
It sounds plausible that you could score your axle shaft, to create a "break here" location. Scoring or notching a component will cause a stress concentration at that location. Under fatigue loading, particularly with hard, brittle materials (like axle shafts), this stress concentration will have a significant effect.
The only trouble is, I would be worried about the fact that I'm making the axle shaft even weaker than it already is, so that it will fail even sooner than it would have failed on its own. If you score your shafts a bit too deeply (and it doesn't take much), you might end up breaking several shafts in the time that it would have taken one unaltered shaft to break. I guess the phone company must have figured it was worth it, though.
Matt
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