Nancy, I appreciate your input, but for a critical component like this, you can't afford to take the "sometimes it just breaks" approach. Certifying and testing fasteners is an area that is pretty mature thanks to the aerospace industry, and with the correct application of procedures like a careful design review and procedures like magnafluxing it would be possible to make a failure like this extremely unlikely.
A good metallurgist can look at the failed studs and tell you why they failed, over stressed (ie underdesigned, fixable), defective material (fixable through better testing and specifications) or fatigued through overuse (fixable through magnafluxing or similar).
Paul T.
Jerry did a great job handling the car and that's the bottom line.
They do test and they do go through everything which is what my point was and still is. It still happens, the last time I remember it happening to a fuel car was Hartley in Houston a few years ago. Same Exact Thing, Almost the Same Exact Spot on the Track. Only difference was that it's a dragster and for whatever reason aero dynamically, it made a left turn on him causing him to kiss the left wall from the right lane. The Cause? The Stud Broke.
NHRA tested it and did all the things you are stating that perhaps they should start doing or may have not thought about, they have. On Hartley's car, The wheel still had all the nuts and the studs attached, NHRA took the Hub, wheel, studs, nuts and a few hours later returned the wheel & hub but kept everything else. All they could come up with as a possiblity, was a hairline crack on the stud (only visible by xray) inside the hub that was not visible to the eye upon normal servicing inspection. Hartley's team did a lot of research on this since they were one of the very few this happened to. (obviously my statement does not include cars involved in some sort of collision, just a wheel coming off during the run for no apparent reason).
All the reports in the world still came to the same conclusion, the stud broke.
Mind you, these guys know what they are doing and have already been there done that on what you are saying and they pay close attention to how many runs, the cause and effect, problem and solution, and track every run detail for every component on the car. Alan Johnson, JFR, Shoe, KB along with NHRA and all the rest of the brain trust out there test and retest. Just because they don't post every result to the public, doesn't mean that safety is not discussed amongst the teams and drivers where it IS the most important, not to spectators or people not within those circles.
There has only been a handful of incident's like this of this kind with the exception of KB trying Titanium studs one time and they sheared off at the hit, but that was a brand new formula that they tried for improvement and it didn't work.
That is all I'm going to say about this subject. Have a great time speculating.
