Steel and Knife Properties, Stress Risers

How Stress Risers Lead to Broken Blades

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Stress Risers/Concentrations

In an ideal world when a force is applied to a knife, that stress is distributed evenly across the piece. There can be certain features to a design, however, that leads to a stress “concentration” where the stress is locally higher than the rest of the piece. Stress is load divided by cross section, so a very simple way stress is concentrated is by having a locally smaller area of a part. read more