Axle flex and tire wear

Are you sure that it's axle flex, pictures of the tire wear maybe helpful.

 

I have never seen or heard of that. Have seen some wide 8,000 Lb axles with a king truss built on top of them. Understand how that can work.
The pictures of angle welded on the axles in you pictures seem wrong to me. When the welds cool would it not tend to cause a reverse arch? Outside wheels up. Should the angle not be on the bottom if you do that?

 

Thanks for sharing that. I am waiting with you.

 

Why not have the proper caster bent into the axle?

 

The axle flex is a real thing. Those tubular axles cannot be bent. Imagine taking a drinking straw and bending it, you risk a kink that will never come out and actually introduce a weak spot that may lead to complete failure of the axle. I haven't heard of the welding reinforcement, but that should work.

 

Seems like a bandaid fix for a improperly speced wall thickness axle tube. If this was a real thing everyone would be having the same issues.
I know meritor and eaton have different thickness axle housings on differentials. Depending on application and GVW.

 

Seen issue with Hendrickson Intraax for last 10 years, tire inner shoulder wear. Worse on wide based tires. We run some pneumatic tanks with the u bent axles, worse on those so I believe axle flex is root cause. We change direction of tire because of inner shoulder wear to get most out of tires. Newer dump trailers are 30K Intraax and still see shoulder wear, just not as severe.