Last summer, I was asked to help determine why a relatively new heat exchange that was part of an industrial boiler system had started springing leaks left and right.

Sometimes it seems “pretty obvious” why a failure happened. If you look at a burst pipe, for example, maybe the edges of the split area seem pretty thin, maybe much

Going back to our potential fracture analysis, in addition to the crack itself, other locations on the component and mating components of the assembly often contain key features that allow the failure to be understood.

A thorough failure analysis will provide resources to address many issues in addition to determining whether the component met the requirements of the engineering print and whether there is evidence of “abuse” of the component.

One of my professor-type colleagues recently asked me to start reviewing some scholarly articles for a materials-engineering journal where he serves as an editorial board member. It has been interesting

In this second part, we conclude the discussion of hydrogen embrittlement.

There are probably few types of metallurgical damage that have as much misinformation swirling around as hydrogen embrittlement.

Sometimes the transverse fracture planes of a ductile torsional crack are readily identifiable.

Torsion is the name for the loading geometry experienced by the shaft of a screwdriver as the tip is held in the slot of a screw and the operator twists the handle (the important part here) while pushing down to drive the screw.

In the last entry, we saw several photos of parts that were broken due to loads applied to a long skinny part in a way that caused the part to bend, initially creating a crack perpendicular to the length of the part.