Max safe TWR

[steuben]

I'm playing around with part cfg files, mostly doing the several orders of magnitude thing with thrust and isp curve. My  problem lies in the testing of these things. After I light the fuse things go poof, at time zero. I can't tell if it is an overheating issue or a structural one. The logs indicate both.

My thinking is that I'm turning everything into a 1mm pancake on ignition

My stacks are pretty short: engine, fuel, pod. nothing terribly fancy.

So, what is the hardest you can push a joint,? or a part for that matter?

[wumpus]

Sounds like that is what you are trying to measure.  I'm guessing you need to drastically lower your TWR (if you are using "multiple orders of magnitude", I cut them in half (i.e. a square root of TWR) and see if that blows up.  Keep lowering it until you find something that will survive.

Some basics:

I know kerbal engineer claims that many of my craft have a max TWR (i.e. just before empty) of nearly 5.  That should certainly be a possibility, and I'm sure some "max speed rockets" have had some pretty high values at some points of another.  I doubt it is possible to have unsurvivable acceleration with stock parts.

Note this doesn't include atmospheric effects.  I've managed to blow up kickers (the biggest SRBs) with simply a TWR of 2.1 (as measured from the launchpad.  They were probably over 5 when they exploded).  You might to try launching from Tylo and seeing if you are destroyed by atmospheric damage instead of excessive weight.