We investigate product liability issues and industrial accidents, fires & explosions, and electrical fires involving industrial/ automotive/ transportation equipment, appliances, and sporting goods equipment.
Accident/ Failure Analysis
Accidents or failures often result from design and/or material imperfections, problems in manufacturing / assembly, component misuse, or corrosion. In high temperature applications, complicated failure modes may ocurr, such as creep ratcheting, rupture, and creep fatigue.
- We have the expertise, technology, and experience to identify and quantify these failure modes.
- We help you understand the root cause and perform design-of-repair to prevent costly recurrences, thus lowering operating costs and improving safety.
<<See Examples to read about our past cases.>>
Metallurgy/ Testing
We offer a full spectrum of metallurgical testing in conjunction with our engineering
analysis tools to evaluate the root cause of component failure. We have
the ability to perform corrosion investigations, surface condition studies,
mechanical and fracture mechanics testing, and evaluations of weldments.
Our testing
includes:
- chemical and mechanical analyses
- metallographic examination
- fractography (SEM and TEM)
- accelerated testing of failure modes
- corrosion testing
Our engineers hold advanced degrees in metallurgy, and mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical engineering. We have investigated numerous incidents including:
- Failures of industrial equipment including lift trucks, vessels, and cranes
- Failures of gas and oil pipelines
- Aviation and aerospace component failures
- Accident/ fire investigations in industrial facilities and power plants
- Product liability issues - sporting goods/ appliances / turbomachinery/ bearings
To read about our full range of engineering services, see Capabilities Summary. To see related links, see Fire/ Explosion, or Expert Witness. See also our list of clients.
<<Above: A failed support/beam in a steel facility, a closeup image of the buckled beam, and a finite element model of the beam.>>