Failure Analysis

Because large industrial systems, structures, and components experience shifting stresses and loads throughout service life, risk of fatigue failure is high. Improving fatigue performance in heavy manufacturing is therefore an important priority. The good news is that many specialized methods for slowing crack formation and predicting fatigue failure have been developed in the past decades....

Selecting the right material for a new medical device -- especially when it comes to polymers -- is critical to the success of the product. Material failures are costly and common; more than a third of FDA recalls are due to material problems. Preventing Material Failure in Plastic Products: A Resource for Medical Manufacturers, written...

The H-coupon test, developed a few years ago to evaluate cracking behavior in spot-welded advanced high-strength steels (AHSS), has recently been applied to galvanized third generation AHSS. Two types of cracking have been observed in the tests of these steel grades – interfacial and zinc liquid metal embrittlement (LME). This research is discussed in Application...