19-10-2021, 07:58 AM
It's a rotating - bending fatigue failure with multiple points of origin. Alternating compressive and tensile stresses in the surface of a driveshaft are normal; the shaft encounters bending loads if only from supporting its own weight. Fatigue is about the cumulative impact of smaller loads. As others have observed the hardness test mark may have been the point of crack initiation, but any tool mark would do.