Does part stress acumulate?

[AgentMOO]

I launched an SSTO to the Mun, but after landing it did not have enough fuel to return. So I modified the plane design with a few lander legs an extra crew compartment and forward canards. I refueled it in orbit and went to rescue the stranded kerbals. Everything went very well. I landed on the Mun again and got the marooned kerbals inside. I took off again and returned to a 75 x 75 km orbit around Kerbin. At this point I switched to the space center briefly then back to the orbiting spaceplane. After completing my deorbit burn I survived re-entry and was now on the glideslope 16km from the runway. However, before I reached the runway a small explosion startled me. Looking over my craft, I noticed the right forward canard was missing! It had blown off somehow. The flight characteristics of the plane remained unchanged so I continued on to the runway. Bang! A piece of my left wing blows off and my plane begins listing badly. While I am looking at the new hole in my wing, another bang . The remaining canard was now gone. My plane is now very difficult to control. I decide to abandon landing at the runway and immediately try for a grass landing. It was too badly damaged. It tumbled and exploded upon touching dirt. The only surviving piece was the crew compartment with the two kerbals inside I had rescued from the Mun. I've never seen parts break like that before. I reposted this from the steam forums. No one there seems to know.

Edited January 9, 2015 by AgentMOO
kraken

[Cirocco]

part stress doesn't accumulate in stock as far as I know. Do you run any mods? FAR or NEAR can definitely do this as a result of aerodynamic forces ripping the wing apart. And with an altered wing come different forces which may result in more destruction, etc.

if you don't run any mods, this sounds like a kraken attack. I've heard/seen of other people saying that they suddenly found parts of their spaceships (often spaceplane wings) destroyed after switching to the tracking center and back.

[AgentMOO]

part stress doesn't accumulate in stock as far as I know. Do you run any mods? FAR or NEAR can definitely do this as a result of aerodynamic forces ripping the wing apart. And with an altered wing come different forces which may result in more destruction, etc. if you don't run any mods, this sounds like a kraken attack. I've heard/seen of other people saying that they suddenly found parts of their spaceships (often spaceplane wings) destroyed after switching to the tracking center and back.

Stock. Kraken? Really? Epic timing.

[RainDreamer]

In stock the physics engine usually do a jump start when you load in a craft, which will sometimes cause sudden explosive decompression. There isn't really a real way around it in stock. You can try strutting down your part harder, but even that is not guaranteed. And may make things worse in some cases, even.

Kerbal joint reinforcement may help with this, if you don't mind slight modding to fix stock problems in code.