FailureAnalysisofSolidBMXCranks-SRJCSanta.pptVIP

Failure Analysis of a Solid? BMX Crank Arm Chad Smith and James Walsh E45 Fall 2004 Instructor: Younes Ataiiyan What are Cranks? Cranks transmit rotary motion and consist of two arms attached to a shaft. A crankset consists of bearings which are pressed into the bike frame, a spindle or shaft, and a crank arm attached to each side of the shaft. Since BMX bike riding consists of doing tricks which in turn heavily abuses the bike, the cranks and shaft take an extreme amount of force in all directions (lateral and vertical) - and therefore must be stronger than on a normal road or mountain bike. Our Objective… We obtained a crank arm which was fractured under heavy stress, which is expected by manufacturer. Our objective was to analyze the fracture in order to determine the cause for failure and to determine the metal’s Carbon content. Visual Inspection Our failure analysis consisted mainly of visual inspection. We noted the fracture at the weld which propagated through the actual material. Top image: Weld fracture Bottom image: Propagation of fracture through arm Next, we put our crank arm in the vice and separated the arm at the fracture point. Note the size difference between the top of the fractured material compared to the right side of the material which is much thinner. The thicker part is from the original fracture, while the thinner part is from the forced separation of the crank arm. The first propagation occurred on the left hand side along the weld. Weld Penetration After separating the crank arm, we noted that the weld penetration was almost non-existent. The weld bead was essentially sitting on top of the material, and therefore we concluded that the strength of the weld was the ultimate cause of fracture. Due to geometry of the crank arm and analysis of regular force application (at pedal boss), a high stress point would be at the point where the spindle interacts with the crank arm. Therefore, our fracture location would be the expecte