Several times I had PE line snaps, during lure casting, or hook-up, snaps when there is little force on the line. All occurs with heavy gauge PE, PE 8, 10, and above.
The same PE brand/type, on lower diameter dont do this. This makes me think, could this cause it?
In mechanical engineering, there is one kind of failure which is called fatique failure. Failure caused by small force, but with repetitive frequency.
Example is when you want to break a single solid wire, say 1mm steel wire, you can do it without any cutting tool. Just bend it repetitively left,right, left, right, so on, several times, and the steel wire will snap.
Back to PE. Here we have 2 kind of PE line on the drawing. One is small diameter PE (say PE2), the other is large diameter PE (say PE12).
We mark both PE with 4 points, A,B,C,D.
AB represent the diameter of the line.
When we cast, or when we stroke a popper, the line on top tip will bend+force following the curvature of the SiC ring.
We can see, the distance between A-C will be larger than B-D. Small diameter PE will have small A-C stretch, but large diameter PE will have extreme stretch, about 3/4 of its diameter.
Since PE line is not rubber, A-C stretch will have permanent effect on the line strength. PE line is made of many fiber bonding. A-C stretch will damage those bondings.
On extreme example, say we have 100lb PE line. 1 bend+force will damage 1lb of bonding. 10 cast, we loose 10 lb of bonding.
On 98th cast, we cast popper, and the whole line snaps. It looks like a popper cast snaps a100lb PE line.
This is where we need a ribbon like (not round diameter) PE for heavy lines, 80lbs or above.
Or like some member suggested, best using hollow PE for heavy gauge popping line. It will be more durable, more reliable. It consists of more strand, and when it bends, it will flattened like a ribbon, thus will have minimal A-B distance, causing minimal A-C stretch, means minimal micro fibre damage during bending+force
