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vaxn8r wrote:
As for the airplane tail section severance, I don't think that may be a good analogy. Everything I read about it said the evidence did not point to engineering/stress fracture/failure per se. It sounds like the co-pilot was fighting turbulence by steering with the tail, something that is specifically against their training and known that it could lead to failure of the tail section.

I've heard others using the tail fracturing as a reason to not use CF but I don't think the evidence supports that conclusion.

Thoughts?

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I don't really know much about the crash other than what I recall from the media. I knew turbulence was involved, but I didn't recall that the co-pilot was trying to correct the plane using the tail. Anyhow, if your statements above about the co-pilot are correct, then shouldn't my analogy in fact be a good one?

My analogy was refering to the engineering design of the tail section. You're infering that it was designed and built properly and the failure was caused by human error. I'm saying the fork was engineered and built properly and then failed because of a load far in excess of its design parameters (possible stick).

You just gotta laugh at people when they use a sample size of one to justify. Heck, better not by a steel frame, they rust you know! Better not buy an Aluminum bike frame; beer cans are made from that stuff and people who drink too much beer crash their car! ...at least those arguments have more data points.

I read a long time ago that when formula 1 car race teams first started using CF, kevlar... for their chassis and suspension parts, they knew that they didn't know enough about the materials. However, they were wise and clever enough to lay fiber optic cables in with the weave of high tech materials. After practice and races, they'd hook up their laser (or whatever light source) to one end of the fiber. If they got light out the other end, that meant it didn't break and the part they were checking was sufficiently strong. They then kept removing material until the fiber broke then added material back in the design. The glass fiber was the weakest link and gave early warning to failures. I thought that would be a good practice for critical things like forks.

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Skuke
95 Carbonframes Tetra Pro
92 Bridgestone MB-1
90 Moser 51.151

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