Bright Engineering was asked to look at a failure in a set of filter drums used in the food industry. This failure had occurred repeatedly and had to be prevented urgently in order for production to continue.
The cracks clearly suggested failure due to fatigue. This was also expected as these filter drums turn around an almost endless number of times in a 24 hour process that doesn't allow for downtime for many months. Due to the size, mass and the content of the drums, the forces are significant. Our first investigation showed that the stresses at the crack locations were much higher than the fatigue limit.
In order to bring the stress levels down, we proposed a few small design changes. These design changes brought the stress levels down to a level well under the fatigue limit. Since the changes were made, these drums have been used for years without any failure.