Quality failure analysis rests on the use of high-level human cognition. Here are five aspects of human mental processes that form the foundation of the way effective thinkers use their mental skills. Let’s review them here, in reference to the basic steps of a failure investigation.

Seeing the flames, I went out and saw that one of the trees had broken off, taking the power line with it.

I recently experienced a bit more excitement than I felt like I really needed, and it’s due to excessive amounts of stored strain energy being converted into cracks!

Some ASM International Failure Analysis Society members are preparing to revise the ASM Metals Handbook on Failure Analysis. I was on the committee the last time and sincerely thought it would stand for the rest of my life.

In carrying out a medical study of the effectiveness of a new treatment, the “gold standard” is the randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled study. This type of medical trial is specifically geared to human participants, whose human minds might otherwise influence the outcome.

Picking up where we left off, this latest crack was also a fatigue crack.

People send their broken, deformed, worn or corroded parts, and I help them figure out what went wrong. That’s my standard “elevator speech.”

What is the difference between following a recipe or a procedure and using a methodology?

A professor visited my lab to discuss teaching a new failure-analysis class. I wanted to show off my equipment, and insects are always interesting to look at in a scanning electron microscope. So I save dead bugs, when I see them, for educational purposes.

I always wondered why quench cracks were intergranular. That’s one of the questions that I did not notice wasn’t answered when I was in school. But some years back I realized that if two grains are adjacent, and during cooling one is getting smaller due to normal thermal contraction and the adjacent one is getting bigger at the moment of transformation to martensite, then there could be a lot of stress at the grain boundary.