Wheel nut failure

Car wheels are fastened to the car by using five bolts or nuts. For a
Volvo car, the hub contains five threaded ends, to which five nuts
can be applied to fasten the wheel. To prevent that the (light metal)
wheels are stolen from the car, often one nut is replaced by a
locking nut, which can only be removed using a special key socket
wrench (see Figure 1a).

Figure 1. a) locking nut with key socket; b) failed nut.

Recently, one of the locking nuts has failed, leaving part of the nut
in the wheel (Fig. 1b). The other part of the nut is shown in Figure 2,
together with a regular nut and an unfailed locking nut.

Figure 2. a) regular and locking nut, b) and c) failed locking nut.

The nut has obviously broken along the thin region in between the
head and the part that fits into the slot in the wheel. The outer ring
of the locking nut head can freely rotate, which prevents the nut to
be released without the key wrench.

Figure 3 shows a comparison between the failed nut and an unfailed

nut (which has been used for the same period on the same car),
both from the bottom and the top.
 Figure 3. a) bottom-view of intact and failed locking nut, b) and c) top-view.
Note the crack in the failed nut (between the arrows).

The nut has failed during fastening. A torque of 110 Nm is

prescribed for the nuts, but the nut failed already before the total
torque had been applied (a torque wrench was used).

The main questions in this case are:

1. What was the failure mechanism(s) leading to the failure ?
2. Can the failure of the nut be explained, using a life prediction /
failure model and the estimated loads ?
3. How could a predictive maintenance concept for this nut look like
?

Finally, suggestions how to remove the remaining part of the nut

from the wheel are welcome