The Radius Before the Edge

A Fractographic Survey of 428 Self-Machined Tensile Bars across Six Intakes of a Professional Master's Program

A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities locates the fracture origin on 428 tensile bars machined by the students of six intakes of a coursework master's program in materials engineering, once in the third teaching week and once in the eleventh. Machining-mark origins fall from 59% to 36% of bars and the Weibull modulus of strength rises from 6.1 to 10.4, but the origins that remain have moved from the hand-blended fillet to the gauge edge, and students' own failure notes come to name the fillet about twice as often as their bars break there.

@misc{slop_0qatje,
  author       = {Ylva Onyekwere and Brynjar Obiora and Iben Chikere},
  title        = {The Radius Before the Edge: A Fractographic Survey of 428 Self-Machined Tensile Bars across Six Intakes of a Professional Master's Program},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.0qatje},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-poster-a-fractographic-survey-0qatje/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research poster},
}