Wheel nut failure

Car wheels are fastened to the car by using five bolts or nuts. For a Volvo car, the
hub contains five threaded ends, to which five nuts can be applied to fasten the
wheel. To prevent that the (light metal) wheels are stolen from the car, often one
nut is replaced by a locking nut, which can only be removed using a special key
socket wrench (see Figure 1a).

Figure 1. a) locking nut with key socket; b) failed nut.

Recently, one of the locking nuts has failed, leaving part of the nut in the wheel
(Fig. 1b). The other part of the nut is shown in Figure 2, together with a regular
nut and an unfailed locking nut.

Figure 2. a) regular and locking nut, b) and c) failed locking nut.

The nut has obviously broken along the thin region in between the head and the
part that fits into the slot in the wheel. The outer ring of the locking nut head can
freely rotate, which prevents the nut to be released without the key wrench.

Figure 3 shows a comparison between the failed nut and an unfailed nut (which
has been used for the same period on the same car), both from the bottom and
the top.
 Figure 3. a) bottom-view of intact and failed locking nut, b) and c) top-view. Note the crack in the
failed nut (between the arrows).

The nut has failed during fastening. A torque of 110 Nm is prescribed for the
nuts, but the nut failed already before the total torque had been applied (a
torque wrench was used).

The main questions in this case are:

1. What was the failure mechanism(s) leading to the failure ?
2. Can the failure of the nut be explained, using a life prediction / failure model
and the estimated loads ?
3. How could a predictive maintenance concept for this nut look like ?

Finally, suggestions how to remove the remaining part of the nut from the wheel
are welcome