Kershaw/ZT Composite blade Question

I have several composite blade kershaws and zt's and I find them to be just as strong as any solid blade knife. I've used mine pretty hard and have had no Problems. I've never even heard of a composite blade breaking along the seam.
 
When Kershaw was testing the composite blades, they broke along the center, not where the two steels meet. So the weld is as strong as steel.
 
"In tests conducted by the inventor, composite blades formed substantially as described above exhibited superior characteristics of strength and toughness, and the joints were found to be stronger than the steel of the blades, such that efforts to cause the pieces to separate invariably resulted in bending or breaking one or both of the pieces, instead of separating them at the joint. It is surmised that this is due, at least in part, to the large contact surface area of the joint, and to the fact, because of the serpentine shape, that there is no single line along which more than a small fraction of the joint can be subjected to concentrated stress."
 
From what i remember the blades broke because they were trying to get the joints to fail. The blade steel and carrier broke before the joint between them did. There were some pictures posted of some of the broken test blades.
 
Even without the above testing reference, as a mechanical engineer I would have told you that the joint is going to be stronger than anything you can do to it without some sort of machinery, or a mechanism to provide significant mechanical advantage...

In other words the joint won't fail by accident, only if you go out of your way to damage it with intent or extreme stupidity...
 
This information is pretty interesting. Perhaps my next knife will have a composite blade...
 
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