If I May...
I called Schutt Industries to inquire about their trailers. I was asked to call Markimus' on his cell phone, which I did. He had as much time as I needed to learn about the XVENTURE. Mark presented himself as professional, accommodating and a stand-up guy. It was a pleasure to talk with him.
In aircraft there are very few welds in the aluminum structures. Where there are welds the parts must go through intense inspection, and generally, an annealing process which removes the heat stress in the weld area.
Few welders of aluminum have the facilities or equipment to do such testing or heat treating. There is much more to it, but this is good for here.
Vibration in any structure causes stress. Stress is the reason that aircraft airframe structures are primarily assembled with rivets and not welded. Rivets can be bucked or pulled. A huck bolt is a rivet. Huck bolts ain't cheap, either.
Welding is essentially a linear fastener on the edge of one or both parts, where five rivets in a pattern like that on dice all share the load applied to that fastened area. Increased attachment area is almost never a bad thing!
When a trailer is pulled over a washboard road, as you know, the vibration is phenomenal! At any material attachment point you will have massive tension, torsion and shear loads taking turns at the fasteners or welds. If the attaching area is thin and/or brittle, eventually that attachment will fail. Of course, any fastening system will fail if the loads are high enough. The magic is matching the fastening system to the anticipated loads. I think Schutt did a good job in the matching department.
Before it gets started that we are talking steaks to strawberries, the stress load principles are the same. It is the material thickness and end use that is different.
The XVENTURE manufacturing process is something I understand very well. I am very impressed with the innovation.
Mr. King
Disclaimer: I have no business or social relationship with Schutt Industries or Markimus outside of the gathering of trailer information.
