Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
DOI 10.1007/s12024-007-0013-6
REVIEW
Forensic engineering: applying materials and mechanics
principles to the investigation of product failures
S. V. Hainsworth Æ M. E. Fitzpatrick
Accepted: 6 April 2007 / Published online: 13 June 2007

Humana Press Inc. 2007
Abstract Forensic engineering is the application of
engineering principles or techniques to the investigation of
materials, products, structures or components that fail or do
not perform as intended. In particular, forensic engineering
can involve providing solutions to forensic problems by the
application of engineering science. A criminal aspect may
be involved in the investigation but often the problems are
related to negligence, breach of contract, or providing
information needed in the redesign of a product to elimi-
nate future failures. Forensic engineering may include the
investigation of the physical causes of accidents or other
sources of claims and litigation (for example, patent dis-
putes). It involves the preparation of technical engineering
reports, and may require giving testimony and providing
advice to assist in the resolution of disputes affecting life or
property.
This paper reviews the principal methods available for
the analysis of failed components and then gives examples
of different component failure modes through selected case
studies.
Keywords Forensic engineering
Engineering design

Microscopy
Failure analysis
S. V. Hainsworth (&)
Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, Leicester
LE1 7RH, UK
e-mail: svh2@le.ac.uk
M. E. Fitzpatrick
Department of Materials Engineering, The Open University,
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK
Introduction
The term ‘forensic engineering’ tends to be applied to the
study of the failure of products and components where the
failure has had an adverse effect: this could range from loss
of life, to minor injury, to downtime of a piece of industrial
plant.
When the failure of a component of a product—be it a
wine bottle, a car or an industrial process line—leads to
personal injury or large financial loss, it is generally the job
of the forensic engineer to discover why the failure oc-
curred, so that liability or fault can be clearly identified. So
typical questions arising from a failure are:
• Was the product being operated correctly? Was the
operator properly trained?
• Was the product correctly maintained? Had the failed
part been used ‘abusively’, or beyond its specified
design life?
• Was any specified inspection régime followed? Had the
failed part been inspected and replaced according to
specification?
• Did the failed part contain a flaw as a result of its
original manufacture? Or had a flaw been introduced
during operation as a result of accident or misuse?
• Did the failed part meet its design specification?
• Was the original design of the product flawed? Was the
specified operation of the product destined to lead to the
failure because the properties of the materials used were
insufficient for the defined operational parameters?
This paper aims to give a review of the key methodol-
ogies and methods used in forensic engineering, with some
examples of failures where the contributing factors were
able to be clearly identified. Further examples and case
studies can be found in, e.g., Lewis et al. [1] and Wulpi [2].
82
Methods of analysis
Failure analysis of components to investigate the failure
mode involves the retrieval of the fractured sections, and
careful preservation of the evidence. The surfaces of the
fracture itself are the regions of most interest in providing
information about the causes of a failure, and it is very
important that these are preserved in the state that they
were in immediately following the failure event. This is, of
course, not always possible in cases where there has been
severe damage to a component subsequent to the failure.
It is always tempting to fit fractured surfaces back to-
gether to see if the two parts fit, but this should be avoided
as it can destroy vital evidence about the fracture process
by abrading away features—such as evidence of internal
flaws—that could be critical to the investigation process.
Surfaces should be kept in an upright position and kept as
clean as possible to avoid contamination from other unre-
lated debris or dust. The temptation to feel how rough the
surfaces are should also be avoided to prevent abrasion and
contamination by grease.
The analysis of any failure will usually start with
examination of the failed component. A paper trail will be
created which compares the original design specification
with the failed product. A series of tests will be made to see
whether the material conforms to its original specification,
including testing of mechanical properties and analyzing
the chemical composition.
Mechanical properties
Typical mechanical properties that are important in
assessing failures are the strength and toughness of a
material (a brief guide to terminology is given in Appendix
I). The fatigue life of a material and the growth rate of
fatigue cracks may be required in some specialized cases.
Information on the strength can often be obtained simply
from a small number of hardness measurements on the
failed part. Measurement of hardness involves pressing an
indenter, of known geometry, into the specimen’s surface
under a defined force, and measuring the width of the in-
dent so produced. Harder materials show smaller indenta-
tions. The hardness of a material can be related to its
strength by a simple empirical relation, and although the
correlation is not exact, it can be sufficient to discover
whether the material’s properties are roughly as they
should be or whether there may be cause for concern and
more-accurate testing is needed.
A material’s toughness is a measure of its resistance to
crack propagation, particularly to the propagation of a
brittle crack. It is important to appreciate that strength and
toughness are entirely different properties: one relates to
the stress required to rupture a material in a tensile test; the
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
other relates to the intensity of crack tip stress field that
causes the crack to grow rapidly to failure [3].
Furthermore, a brittle fracture—where there is relatively
low energy absorption, and very little distortion of the
sample around the fracture plane—does not necessarily
mean that the material involved has a low toughness.
Figure 1 shows half of a high-quality steel toughness-test
sample. The region on the upper right was a starter notch
from which a fatigue crack was grown to initiate the final
failure; the left portion of the fracture surface shows a flat,
brittle fracture. This steel has good toughness, but can still
show a brittle fracture if it contains a crack in a sufficiently
large section—such as that shown—where plastic defor-
mation is constrained.
The final fracture of a component may be relatively
unimportant, however, compared to the slow growth of a
crack, by a mechanism such as fatigue or stress corrosion
cracking. We will return to this in later sections.
Optical and microscopical examination
Examination of the failed component starts with a visual
examination of the macroscopic appearance of the speci-
men. The visual analysis initially includes observation of
the general shape and colour; followed by an assessment of
whether it appears corroded and/or pitted; whether there
are obvious features on the fracture surface; and evidence
of gross damage. The initial visual examination is sup-
ported by use of a hand lens or loupe, and higher-magni-
fication imaging using stereo microscopy. If there are
features that would benefit from even-higher-magnification
observation a scanning electron microscope is commonly
used.
Modern scanning electron microscopes can accommo-
date large sample sizes (typically up to the size of a house
brick); and can often be used in either low-vacuum or
Fig. 1 A flat, brittle fracture, in a tough, modern steel. The figure
shows one-half of a fractured test specimen. A fatigue crack was
initiated and grown from a notch (the area on the upper right of the
sample). The final fracture is the speckled region, and shows none of
the deformation associated with plasticity and ductility
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
environmental imaging modes, which can allow samples to
be imaged without the need for a conducting coating to be
deposited on the surface (a conventional scanning electron
microscope needs conducting surfaces to prevent charge
build-up on the specimen being imaged) [4]. Samples can
also be imaged in a water-vapour environment if, for
example, they need to be prevented from drying out.
Scanning electron microscopes are widely used in
forensic failure analysis as they provide high-resolution
images of fracture surfaces with good perception of depth.
Additionally, most modern microscopes are equipped with
energy-dispersive X-ray analysis equipment (commonly
referred to as EDX) that allows the identification of the
elements present on the sample surface. This can be
valuable in identifying chemical species on the specimen
surface that may have been a root cause of the specimen
failure.
For engineering failures, a detailed metallurgical
investigation of a polished section of the material may be
required. The mechanical properties of metals and alloys
are strongly influenced by the size of the metallic crystal
grains (typically of the order of 1–100 lm), and the shape
and distribution of strengthening precipitates. Such details
cannot be distinguished by the naked eye, and often a
metallurgical reflected-light microscope will be used to
examine a flat polished and etched specimen of the mate-
rial. The maximum magnification of a metallurgical
microscope is typically 1,000x. To obtain a flat polished
specimen the material must be destructively sectioned and
therefore this stage of investigation may be left until last
for a forensic investigation, but it can be one of the first
techniques used for examination of failure in an industrial
process. The metallurgical examination can also reveal the
manufacturing route, which essentially leaves a fingerprint
of the production method on the material (from, e.g., the
grain size and shape, material flow patterns etc.). Metal-
lurgical examination can be an excellent way of revealing
whether a material has been cast rather than forged, for
example, and this technique is often used to identify the
production route for counterfeit coins.
The design process
In some failures of complex components, subjected to
complex stress fields and loading cycles, it may be nec-
essary to probe deeply into the design process by which the
component was specified and developed, to ensure that the
designers have a sufficient understanding of the key factors
influencing the product performance to be able to rectify
any generic problems arising from the failure. Examples
are found in highly regulated industries, such as the aero-
space industry, where failure can have serious conse-
quences.
83
Finite-element analysis
Many modern design processes involve an analysis of the
stresses that components will experience in service from
the known loading. Often this analysis is conducted by
finite-element (FE) methods [5], where the component is
discretized into many small elements, the response of
which to the applied loads are analyzed to give information
about the stresses in the component. Complex algorithms
are used to solve the multiple simultaneous equations that
result, which requires a dedicated computing package.
Historically, dedicated workstations have been needed for
FE analyses, although today they can be performed with a
high-end desktop PC.
FE models can give a very good estimate of the mag-
nitude and the location of the peak stresses in a component,
and in particular allow the impact of stress concentrations
(such as holes, etc.) to be taken into account. It is also
possible to obtain estimates of fatigue lives, for example,
by combining the anticipated strain amplitudes predicted
by the FE model with the experimentally determined fati-
gue behavior of the material used.
In order for an FE model to describe successfully the
response of a component, various input parameters need to
be supplied with a good degree of accuracy:
• The mechanical properties of the material, such as its
strength and toughness; for complex analyses the
thermal properties of the material may be required, or
the hardening behavior of a metal when it is deformed
plastically
• The loads that will be applied to the part during
operation
• The nature of the contact between different parts of the
model: the stress values can be highly dependent on
frictional forces, for example.
The output from an FE model is therefore critically-
dependent on the input data it has to work with. It is also
the case that for very large and complex structures, only
subsections of the structure will be analyzed in detail,
following a global analysis of the entire structure.
One famous failure of the FE approach was the collapse
of the Sleipner North Sea oil platform during installation in
1991. A combination of quite small errors in the initial
calculations led to a critical location being overlooked
during the detailed analysis [6]. The financial consequences
were severe, and the redesign was undertaken using tradi-
tional hand calculations alongside an improved FE analysis.
The Hyatt Regency disaster
An example of a catastrophic change in design that took
place without full consideration of the consequences oc-
84
curred in the USA in the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel.
The construction of the hotel was begun in 1978. It had a
large atrium at the front of the building which was spanned
by walkways at three different levels. The walkways con-
sisted of concrete decks that were suspended from the
ceiling on steel rods. The walkways at the second and
fourth floor were intended to be suspended on the same
rods whilst the walkway at third floor level was offset and
suspended on separate rods.
The problem arose from the installation of the second-
and fourth-floor walkways. The design as originally ap-
proved (see Fig. 2a) mounted both walkways on the same
support rods. The design was revised at some point during
construction, presumably because installing the fourth-
floor support would effectively require a screw thread for
the span of two floors to allow the support nut to be fitted.
The original design was therefore modified to that shown in
Fig. 2b, which was simpler to construct. However, it can
clearly be seen that in the revised design the support on the
lower edge of the upper walkway is bearing the load of
both decks.
The walkways failed catastrophically on 17th July 1981
when there was a tea dance at the hotel. The walkways
were busy with people, and high loads caused the support
of the fourth-floor walkway to fail. It collapsed onto the
second-floor walkway, and both then fell to the lobby. 114
people were killed and over 200 injured, which is still the
worst accidental structural engineering failure to occur in
the USA.
The subsequent investigation found that the strength of
the supports would have been marginal even without the
fatal change in design. The third-floor walkway supports,
which bore the load of a single walkway alone, also
showed evidence of distortion.
This is a case where, irrespective of the materials used,
the fundamental design was flawed; and a change during
installation (the exact origin and approval of which was
disputed) led to disaster. There were therefore shortcom-
ings in the overall project management, particularly in re-
gard to the analysis and approval of the detailed structural
design [7, 8].
Fig. 2 (a) Initial design of walkways for the Hyatt Regency Hotel in
Kansas; (b) revised design implemented after difficulties in produc-
tion of the suspension rod for the initial design shown in (a)
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
Failure modes of engineering materials
The range of materials that a forensic engineer will
encounter is vast, and often experts confine themselves to a
single class of materials, or even to one material variant.
Materials are generally classified as metals, ceramics,
polymers and composites. Composites are discrete mix-
tures of materials, such as fibreglass, which comprises glass
(a ceramic) fibres in an epoxy (polymer) matrix.
Simple failure modes of materials have a distinct
appearance that is often easy to determine from a simple
examination of the component, for example, Fig. 3 shows
the characteristic shapes of the different failure modes that
can occur for ductile and brittle materials failing by tension
and torsion. Ductile or brittle failures occur when the load
applied to the specimen exceeds the failure strength of the
material: this is classified as an overload failure.
More often, materials fail after prolonged service, and
the major mechanisms that contribute to such failures are
fatigue, corrosion, wear or creep.
The remainder of this paper will give examples of the
different failures that can occur and the range of materials
and structures that involve investigation by forensic engi-
neers.
Ductile failure
A case where a material failed by sudden overload is
illustrated in Figs. 4 and 5. Figure 4a shows a macrograph
of a fracture of a nylon seatbelt. The seatbelt failed when
the driver of the car crashed into a tree. The driver sus-
tained serious injuries when the engine was pushed back-
wards into the passenger compartment and the unrestrained
driver moved forwards onto the engine.
Seatbelts are manufactured to high standards, and are
tested to ensure that their strength is sufficient that they
should not fail by overload during an accident. Seat belts
are subjected to rapidly applied loads, resulting in high
strain rates that can lead to failure at lower loads than if the
load is applied gradually. In many cases, failures in acci-
dents are seen in the seatbelt anchorages rather than the
belt itself. Belt failures can usually be traced to either a
manufacturing defect; or from general abuse of the belt,
such as being trapped in the door or dragged along outside
the vehicle; or from damage caused by abrasion of the belt
on sharp edges of a seat. Any such mechanism will lead to
premature failure at loads lower than the safety rating of
the belt. Also, the forces exerted in an impact can occa-
sionally be sufficiently high to result in tensile overload
failure even for the best design and fabrication of belt to
the highest standards.
The strength of seat belt materials can degrade with
exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. This is particularly
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92 85

Fig. 3 Morphologies of
samples with various fracture
geometries: (a) ductile material
in tension, cup-and-cone
fracture (b) ductile material in
combined loading of tension
and torsion (c) ductile material
in torsion (d) brittle material in
tension (e) brittle material in
torsion

Fig. 4 (a) Macrograph of a

seatbelt which failed in an
accident where a car impacted a
tree. (b) Macrograph of a cut
seatbelt

Fig. 5 (a) Cut seat belt

showing fibres still tightly
packed. (b) End of seat belt
from accident showing fibres
loosely packed. (c) Higher-
magnification image of bulbous
end of fibre from high-strain-
rate overload failure. (d)
Higher-magnification image of
cut ends of fibres
86
observed in nylon belts where the tensile strength of the
webbing can drop to around 40% of the original strength
after prolonged exposure to UV.
The initial stages of examination of a failed belt can give
a good indication of the failure mode. Tensile failures give
an irregular, uneven, feathery, or horsetail appearance. The
feathery appearance is more characteristic of polyester
belts and the horsetail appearance is more often found for
nylon belts. A cut belt will be straight-edged. Figure 4a
showed that the failure was typically horsetail in nature and
the material of the belt was confirmed to be nylon by
Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. A cut belt
is shown in Fig. 4b for comparison. Higher-resolution
images of the failure from environmental scanning electron
microscopy show that the differing failure modes can be
clearly identified. The cut belt showed a straight edge: this
is shown in more detail in Fig. 5a, which shows all the
fibres neatly stacked together. By contrast Fig. 5b shows
fibres that are randomly scattered from the overloaded belt.
The accident belt shows bulbous mushroom ends to the
fibres, which are characteristic of melting that can occur in
high-strain-rate overload failures. This can be seen in the
higher-magnification micrograph of Fig. 5c. Figure 5d
shows an end of one of the cut fibres for comparison which
shows a crimped end to the fibre and a clean-cut fracture.
Inspection of the belt showed that there was no evidence
of UV degradation as would be evidenced initially by
fading of the belt and there were no worn or damaged
regions on the belt as would be seen if it had been con-
sistently trapped in the car door for example. There was no
evidence of a manufacturing defect. The failure in this case
was clearly a result of tensile overload.
Brittle failure
Some materials will always exhibit brittle failures: all
ceramic materials and many polymers, for example. A
brittle failure is characterized by a lack of deformation
around the fracture surface, and is a low-energy fracture:
this is what can make a brittle failure a cause for concern
compared a ductile failure. In a metallic structure, a plastic
distortion of part of a structure, whilst still a failure, may
not have the consequences of a brittle fracture of the same
part.
As mentioned earlier, tough, ductile metals can exhibit
brittle failures if they contain cracks in thick sections. The
material’s toughness is the key parameter in determining
resistance to cracking, and the incidence of a brittle failure
can be evidence of a material with unexpectedly low
toughness. Steels in particular show a ductile-to-brittle
transition temperature below which their toughness can fall
substantially. For modern, high-quality steels this is gen-
erally well below 0̊C, although some older steels, which are
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
still found in operation today, can show brittle failure even
close to room temperature.
Toughness tends to reduce as strength increases for a
given alloy; hence steels that are extremely hard—most
tool steels, for example—can have low toughness and be
susceptible to brittle failure if improperly heat treated. A
common accident related to this is the chipping of frag-
ments from hammers or punches during use, which can
lead to injury if eye protection is not worn [9].
Brittle failures can pose problems for the forensic
engineer if they are associated with a shatter effect, where
not all of the fragments can be retrieved.
Fatigue
Fatigue is a phenomenon where a material fails when
subjected to cyclic loading, despite the applied loads being
well within the strength of the material. Fatigue occurs by a
process of the initiation and growth of cracks, which grow
until eventually the material can no longer sustain the ap-
plied load and fails, often in a brittle manner. Fatigue can
be initiated by a stress concentration, such as a hole, notch,
or a flaw in a weld; but a highly stressed component that
experiences cyclic loading is likely to develop fatigue
cracks even in the absence of an obvious initiation point.
Fatigue fracture surfaces are often macroscopically flat
in appearance, but they may show characteristic features
such as beach marks and striations. Beach marks are visible
on the macroscopic scale and are caused by successive
stages of crack growth and arrest (see Fig. 6) as a crack
grows through the section. The new area of crack is sus-
ceptible to corrosion, which leaves a beach mark. Beach
marks can also be produced by the local changes in plas-
ticity at the crack tip when the applied loading changes.
Fig. 6 Part of the fatigue fracture surface of a magnesium alloy
showing beach marks (arrowed). The white lines point back towards
the fracture origin which in this case was found to be an oxide
inclusion
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92 87

Beach marks (if present) often radiate from the origin of

the crack and are easily identified. Striations occur on a
microscopic scale and reveal the progressive stages of
crack growth that can only be seen at high magnification in
the scanning electron microscope (Fig. 7). Each striation is
produced by one load cycle, enabling the crack growth rate
to be measured. Knowing the crack growth rate it is pos-
sible to infer the loads experienced by the component
which drove the crack forward. Again, striations point back
towards the origin of the failure.
An example of a serious fatigue failure is shown in
Fig. 8. The failure occurred in a magnesium alloy racing
wheel whilst the motorcyclist was taking part in the Isle of
Man Tourist Trophy (TT) races. The failure occurred as the
biker rounded a bend in the road at over 120 mph and the
back wheel fractured and came away from the bike. The
Fig. 8 A magnesium-alloy racing wheel that failed during racing.
failed wheel is shown in Fig. 8, and it can be seen that the The race driver sustained serious injuries to his legs as a result of the
wheel is missing its spokes. The initial fracture occurred at failure when the bike was travelling at over 120 mph. The initial
a point where a spoke joined the rim, and the remaining fracture occurred at a point where a spoke joined the rim and the
spokes rapidly failed in turn until the wheel detached from remaining spokes failed in turn
the bike. The biker sustained serious leg injuries as he
came off the bike.
A separate fatigue failure of a magnesium-alloy racing
wheel is shown in Fig. 9. The failure in this case was not
catastrophic, as the crack grew through the thickness of the
wheel hub, resulting in the gradual depressurization of the
tyre. The crack therefore did not result in complete failure
of the wheel. The crack location was identified using a dye-
penetrant method, and then a section was removed from the
wheel that contained the crack. This section was then
loaded to fracture to enable investigation of the fatigue
surface. The investigation sought to discover whether the
fatigue crack had been initiated by a manufacturing defect.
The cracked section is shown in Fig. 9; the arrows indicate
the extent of the fatigue crack. The crack had grown in
stages (probably in successive races) and there are
Fig. 9 Two halves of a fracture through a magnesium-alloy racing
wheel. A section of the rim has been extracted from the wheel. The
fracture initiated at the bottom of the spoke where the loading mode
was bending. Magnesium is a relatively brittle material and the crack
initiated at multiple sites. The extent of the crack is indicated by the
arrows

numerous beach marks on the failure surface. The crack

Fig. 7 Striations on the fracture surface of a steel metal matrix
composite
had initiated at multiple points (just discernible by the
ridges near the centre of the crack, where different cracks
in slightly different orientations have merged). A higher-
magnification image of part of the crack is shown in Fig. 6,
which showed the beach marks from part of the crack in
greater detail. The crack in Fig. 6 was found to initiate at
an oxide inclusion. However, for this fatigue failure, the
fact that there were multiple origins of the fatigue crack
indicated that the fatigue strength of the material was
88
insufficient for the applied cyclic loads. The problem was
traced to a manufacturing problem where the material’s
final heat treatment had not given the required mechanical
properties.
Striations were not found on this fracture surface: they
are not always seen on all material fatigue fracture sur-
faces, but whilst the presence of striations always indicates
fatigue, their absence does not indicate that fatigue was not
the failure mechanism.
Fatigue and fracture are not just a problem in large
engineering structures: they can also be a problem in
medical implant devices such as breast implants and car-
diac pacemakers. Shock loading of pacemakers can result
in overload failure of the leads or breakage of the lead
socket [10–12]. Fatigue through a process known as
pacemaker twiddlers syndrome, where the leads connecting
from the pacemaker to the heart become twisted, is also
common [13, 14].
Inspecting for fatigue damage
The imperative for low weight in aircraft structures means
that they have to be designed with the knowledge that fa-
tigue damage is highly possible. The design must therefore
include inspection regimes to ensure that growing fatigue
cracks are detected, so that parts can be repaired or re-
placed before catastrophic failure occurs. If inspection is
not possible, then parts have to be retired before failure by
fatigue can occur. The lifetime between inspections, or to
retirement, is calculated by assuming an initial defect size,
and calculating the number of flight cycles required to
grow it to failure. Inspection or retirement can then be
implemented with an adequate factor of safety. A typical
inspection programme will be designed so that there are at
least two opportunities to find a growing fatigue crack
before failure occurs.
A recent failure in the engine of a Boeing 767 aircraft
illustrates where inspection routines had to be modified
after a significant failure. On June 2, 2006, a ground test was
being performed at Los Angeles airport on an American
Airlines Boeing 767 fitted with General Electric engines.
The flight crew had reported a power lag in the left-hand
engine on its previous flight. The ground crew had powered
the engines to maximum twice when there was an explosion
in the left engine. The high-pressure turbine stage 1 disc had
ruptured, with large pieces of debris being thrown out of the
engine housing. One piece bounced off the runway, through
the aircraft fuselage and lodged in the engine cowling on the
other side of the plane (Fig. 10). Another fragment was
found over 700 m away against an airport perimeter fence,
and had crossed two active runways and taxiways to get
there! The engine was a total loss, and the plane was
damaged substantially. Fortunately there were no injuries.
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
Fig. 10 Part of no. 1 engine lodged in no. 2 engine after bouncing off
the runway (from [14])
The disk had accumulated 9,186 flight cycles in service
(48,429 hours), and had 5,814 cycles remaining before
compulsory retirement at its design limit of 15,000 cycles.
Clearly if this failure had happened in flight, the aircraft
could have crashed, though other such failures in the past
have not always had disastrous consequences.
Metallurgical examination revealed that the disk rupture
was the result of a radial fracture, where a fatigue crack had
originated at a small dent found at the bottom of one of the
slots into which the turbine blades are fitted. Blade roots in
turbine discs are sources of stress concentration: defects
introduced during fabrication or maintenance can make
things worse in such highly stressed areas of a component.
The examination also revealed two other similar cracks on
the disk.
The consequences of the incident were that enhanced
inspection regimes, at reduced flight cycles, were instigated
for the engine type concerned, particularly for discs that
had previously had repair work in the blade root. This is an
example of inspection practice being modified in the light
of in-service experience. The entire design of the disc was
also reviewed to ensure future safety [15].
Residual stress
Residual stresses are those stresses that exist in a component
in the absence of externally-applied loads. They are typi-
cally induced into materials by forming operations, where
different degrees of plastic deformation in different regions
leads to a locked-in stress field. In particular, very high
residual stresses, approaching the yield stress of the mate-
rial, can be induced by welding processes; although com-
ponents are often post weld heat-treated to try to minimize
the level of residual stress [16]. Residual stresses in a
component can add to in-service stresses to cause failure.
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
Often residual stresses are induced deliberately into
components in order to improve their performance. For
example, peening methods are commonly used to introduce
beneficial residual stresses at the surface of a component,
by repeated deformation of the surface by the impact of
high-speed shot. These compressive stresses act to retard
the initiation and growth of fatigue cracks, and so improve
the operating life of the component.
In the case of a failure where the part in question has a
specified treatment which is design to induce residual
stress, part of the investigation will be to confirm that the
desired residual stress has been obtained. A standard
method used for such measurements is laboratory-based X-
ray diffraction, which determines the stress within a few
tens of microns of the surface of the sample. This is a
nondestructive method, so the sample is unchanged by the
measurement. However, if the full profile of the residual
stress with depth is required, then either a surface-removal
technique must be used in conjunction with the X-ray
measurements, or an alternative method such as hole-dril-
ling must be used. In either case, the sample is partly
damaged in obtaining the results.
Corrosion and degradation
The environment that a component is exposed to can be
critical in causing failure. Different materials are suscep-
tible to different factors: many steels will corrode simply
under the effects of air and moisture; brass is susceptible to
attack by ammonia; and polymers can be susceptible to
degradation by UV, ozone, and a range of common
household and industrial chemicals. Figure 11 shows a
failed nylon fuel pipe from the diesel engine of a tow truck,
which failed as a result of coming into contact with battery
acid, spilling diesel fuel onto the road and causing severe
injury to another motorist [17].
A notable historical failure was the collapse of the Silver
Bridge on the Ohio River in December 1967, killing 46
Fig. 11 Montage of a crack on
a failed nylon fuel pipe. The
failure occurred by a fatigue
process after cracks were
initiated by stress-corrosion
cracking from sulphuric acid
dripping from the battery onto
the pipe [15]. The arrows
indicate crack fronts that grew
on different cycles
89
people. The bridge was a suspension bridge, and the sus-
pension train consisted of a series of linked eye-bars, very
like a bicycle chain. Such designs have been widely used,
notably in Telford’s bridge across the Menai Straits.
However, the Silver Bridge had no redundancy: the failure
of a single eye-bar would lead to the collapse of the
structure, and that is precisely what occurred.
Each eye-bar contained high levels of residual tensile
stress from the manufacturing process. The assembly of the
eye-bars onto the linking pins also left regions where rain-
water could collect, and pollution from local industry added
to the corrosive environment in which the bridge operated.
The combination of the stress, the material and the envi-
ronment led to stress corrosion cracking of one of the eye-
bars. Over the bridge’s 48 years of operation, a crack had
grown from the hole at one end of eyebar 330, one of the most
highly loaded eyebars on the bridge. On the day the failure
occurred, the temperature was near freezing, and the steel
used had a low toughness at those temperatures. The crack,
which was less than 5 mm long, caused a brittle failure of one
side of the eyebar. The other side then failed, and the struc-
ture then collapsed as successive elements failed.
Wear
Wear problems can be significant sources of failure. Wear
occurs by a number of different mechanisms such as
abrasion and adhesion. Abrasion is where the surface of
one material is removed by hard sharp abrasive particles of
a usually different material. Adhesion occurs when two
contacting surfaces essentially stick to each other. Con-
tinued sliding of the components then results in shear of the
softer material, which remains attached to the counterbody.
One body thus loses weight and the other may gain weight.
Extreme cases of adhesion result in complete seizure.
Figure 12 shows severe adhesive wear on the surface of a
steel pin joint from a backhoe loader. The bearings within
the joints of backhoe loaders support high loads and have
90
slow sliding speeds. The hardened steel pins sit in a steel
bush; steel is used for both components to enable the loaders
to be produced at competitive prices. The pins are grease-
lubricated and the grease is applied daily, but because of the
slow sliding speeds it is difficult to entrain lubricant
effectively into the contact. This means that it is necessary
to try and avoid adhesive wear by a good choice of materials
and good bearing design. To avoid adhesion problems,
dissimilar materials are preferred and therefore steel on
steel is not the optimum design solution to avoid adhesive
wear. In this case, the main cause of the adhesion problem
was identified as an additional bending load on the pin joint,
which was deforming the pin and leading to reduced
clearances between the journal (the pin) and the bush. The
solution was to reduce the bending loads on the pin and use
a PTFE/MoS2 sprayed coating on the pin to avoid the
problems of like-on-like contact. This reduced the adhesion
problem and prevented seizure of the loader arm.
Creep
Creep occurs in materials that are exposed to stress and
temperatures above 0.4Tm, where Tm is their melting
temperature in Kelvin. The material can show a gradual
irreversible deformation over time, which eventually results
in failure. Creep is a common problem in power plant,
particularly steam or gas turbines. The bolts used to hold
steam chambers together, the pipework and the turbine
blades can all suffer failure owing to creep mechanisms.
Areas that are welded are particularly vulnerable to creep
failure owing to local changes in the microstructure and the
generation of residual stresses from the differential thermal
contraction of the molten weld pool and the cooler sur-
rounding material. Figure 13 shows a long-term creep
Fig. 12 Surface of a steel pin used in a Backhoe loader showing
evidence of severe adhesive wear
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
failure crack that occurred in the heat-affected zone around
a weld in a 0.5% Cr, 0.5% Mo, 0.25 %V steel steam pipe-
work in a UK coal-fired power station operating at 565C.
Educational messages
1. Forensic engineers apply engineering principles and
methods to identify the root cause for failure of com-
ponents and/or structures.
2. Examination of failed components can provide a
materials fingerprint that allows failure mechanisms to
be identified.
3. Materials failures can be complex and their analysis
may require a range of skills spanning engineering
disciplines (including materials properties, mechanical
response, design principles) to correctly identify the
reason(s) underlying the failure.
4. Forensic engineers work on a diverse range of mate-
rials such as metals, ceramics, polymers and compos-
ites, and a variety of failures spanning many industrial
sectors
5. Materials characterization by modern analytical tools,
including advanced microscopy, underpins much of
the work of identifying failure mechanisms.
Concluding remarks
This article has reviewed the role of the forensic engineer
in terms of identifying the reasons underlying a failure,
through analysis of the design, materials, operating loads,
and inspection and operation of the failed parts. Examining
a failed component can provide a wealth of information
Fig. 13 Long-term creep failure by cracking in the heat affected zone
of a weld in 0.5% Cr, 0.5% Mo, 0.25% V steel steam pipework at a
UK coal-fired power station operating at 565C
Forens Sci Med Pathol (2007) 3:81–92
about its properties and the loading it experienced before
failure, even in the absence of certain knowledge of the
operating conditions.
Forensic engineers are involved in a diverse number of
failure investigations, be they structural, mechanical or
production oriented. The range of materials and applica-
tions is diverse. A number of case studies have been pre-
sented to illustrate the range of areas where forensic
engineers practise.
Acknowledgements Professor Adrian Demaid of The Open Uni-
versity is thanked for permission to use Fig. 1 and Dr David Bacon
kindly supplied Fig. 7. Mr Ian Coleman and Mr Richard Clarke are
thanked for the provision of Figs. 6, 8 and 9. Dr David Allen of EON
UK is thanked for his kind provision of Fig. 13. Dr Peter Lewis is
thanked for his support of the authors through discussions, joint re-
search projects, development of teaching material and access to a
wealth of case studies.
Appendix I—Guide to terminology
Fracture
Fracture is, in essence, the separation of a component into
two parts, and occurs when the load on the component
exceeds its elastic and plastic deformation limits. The
fracture follows a path through the specimen which de-
pends on the mode of loading (e.g., tension, torsion) and
the material’s properties (i.e., ductile or brittle). The frac-
ture path can also be termed the fracture plane.
Stress
Defined as the force per unit area on a material. The
strength of a material (see below) is the stress that causes
failure. Stress is used in calculation in preference to applied
load as it takes into account geometrical effects. A stress
applied to a body results in a change in dimensions, which
is described as strain.
Strength
The strength of a material is defined in a number of ways.
The yield strength is the stress at which the onset of per-
manent plastic deformation occurs. At stresses lower than
this, the deformation is elastic and recovered when the load
is removed. The tensile strength or ultimate tensile strength
is measured from the highest load recorded in a tensile test
on a material.
Hardness
Hardness is a measure of a materials resistance to pene-
tration. There are a range of different tests for classifying
91
hardness (e.g., Vickers, Brinell, Rockwell), which are
based on measurement of the size of the permanent
impression left when a material is indented with a defined
indenter geometry and a known applied load. The hardness
of metals relates to their yield strength, although the exact
relation varies for different alloys. Hardness testing is
widely used as it is easy to perform.
Stress concentration
Stress concentrations cause a local increase in an other-
wise uniform stress and typically occur around notches,
corners and holes. The higher stress level means that
failure often occurs preferentially at these locations. Good
design procedures usually minimize the effects of such
features but they are often introduced unexpectedly from
last-minute design changes or changes in the manufac-
turing process.
Plasticity
A property of materials by which the deformation is re-
tained after the removal of stress. Initially materials re-
spond to an applied load in an elastic manner and
deformation is nonpermanent. At stresses above the yield
strength, materials deform by irrecoverable plastic flow.
Toughness
The toughness of a material is a measure of its ability to
resist propagation of cracks. Low values of toughness are
usually associated with brittle fractures.
Fatigue
Fatigue is a phenomenon by which materials fail by the
repeated application of stress. Above a certain threshold
stress amplitude, cracks initiate and grow in the material,
where the rate of growth typically depends on the magni-
tude of the applied cyclic stress. When the crack reaches a
critical length, failure occurs by fracture. Cracks typically
initiate at defects in the material or stress concentrations
from poor design. Below the threshold stress amplitude,
cracks do not initiate.
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