Failure Analysis
- What is engineering failure analysis?
Engineering failure analysis is the application of scientific methodology, knowledge and experience to investigate an engineering failure, incident, or accident, with the aim to identify the mechanism(s) and root cause(s) and provide recommendations on countermeasure(s) to prevent similar failure, incident or accident or minimize the failure rate.
- Definitions of engineering failure, incident and accident.
Engineering failure: an unexpected event in which an engineering product (e.g., component, part, device, system, etc.) had lost its function fully or partially, or became unsafe for operation, or made the final products unreliable, or induced harmful impact to the environment, etc.
Incident: an unexpected event that may result in loss of production and property damage, but does not result in an injury or illness of people and/or other living things.
Accident: an unexpected event that may result in loss of production and property damage, and does result in an injury or illness of people and/or other living things. - Who are we?
We are a neutral, professional, and experienced party to provide engineering failure analysis service.
We are able to and have successfully conducted projects on behalf of our clients from different industries (e.g., aviation, construction, electronics, power generation, oil & gas, manufacturing, etc.) involving complex failure modes (e.g., distortion, cracking, corrosion, wear, fatigue, creep, fire, explosion, flashover, arcing, etc.), diverse materials (e.g., metal, polymer, ceramic, composites, etc.) and various root causes (e.g., design issue, manufacturing defect, installation problem, operation issue, environmental attack, etc.).
- How do we carry out engineering failure analysis?
The objective of a failure analysis is to determine the failure mode and failure mechanism(s), and determine the root cause of a failure. It is important to establish the chain of causation that led to the failure and figure out the sequence of the accidents. Scientific principles and methodologies are the basis to carry out engineering failure analysis. We use an evidence-based approach coupled with numerical simulation as necessary.
The scope of a typical investigation usually covers:- Background information review and analysis of client’s available data.
- Site visit, inspection and systematic sampling.
- Detailed planned laboratory analysis of selected samples.
- Data analysis, interpretation and logical inference.
- Report preparation and presentation of our investigation to the client.
- Provide improvement recommendations and follow up with the improvement validation.
- Technical support in disputes arising from our report.
- Value added for our clients:
- As a valuable resource, we provide unique expertise to help our client to understand the failure, incident or accident clearly in a timely manner.
- Our reports provide clear direction to determine the liability of involved parties.
- We advise the client of countermeasures of preventing similar failure, incident or accident or minimizing failure rate.
- Our report can be used as expert evidence for litigation matters and/or insurance claims (if applicable).
