FAILURE ANALYSIS

From industrial machines to household goods we answer the question: Why did it fail?  Was it designed poorly, used improperly, subjected to extreme conditions, or was scheduled maintenance ignored?  Using engineering principles we intensively analyze the system in question to find out why it failed. 

We often use stress analysis programs to support our findings and present them in graphical form, making our conclusions easy for people without scientific training to understand.  Below is an example of this.  The figure on the left shows the stress distribution when a certain part is under loading, and the figure on the right is a graphical display of the factor of safety (FOS) for this part.  A FOS of one means the part can withstand exactly the stress it’s expected to encounter in use, while a FOS of three, for instance, means the part can withstand three times the stress it’s expected to be subjected to.  Skilled design engineers design a part to have a FOS much greater than one. Areas of high stress and low FOS are shown in warm colors, while areas of low stress and high FOS are shown in cool colors. In other words, areas of concern are shown in warm colors and safe areas are shown in cool colors. It can be seen in the part below that the stresses shown in red (on the figure on the left) is the area where the FOS is lowest (in the figure on the right). In this case the FOS is one, which indicates that this is not a safe design, since any loading over the expected load would result in failure.   This is an example of one of the failure analysis techniques True Forensics utilizes.