If I bend a piece of metal forward and back a bunch of times, eventually it will break even if I couldn’t break it in the beginning. I believe that is due to metal fatigue(?) How does that work? What’s specifically getting “tired”? the chemical bonds? the structural integrity?
Say I have a piece of metal that I bent and unbent thousands of times. If I melt it back and recreate the shape, does the fatigue “go away”? How does it work?
In: Engineering
If you bend a piece of metal, there is a risk that a really tiny crack somewhere on the bend emerges. It can be microscopic, but it is still there. Every time you bend that piece of metal again, that tiny crack grows a little bit. At some point, the crack will be so big that it reaches a critical size – and then the piece will break in half.
If you melt the piece and recreate the shape, the cracks are gone and therefore there is no fatigue until you bend it again enough times for a crack to emerge and grow.
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