The failure or fracture of a product or component as a result of a single event is known as mechanical overload. It is a common
failure mode
Failure causes are defects in design, process, quality, or part application, which are the underlying cause of a failure or which initiate a process which leads to failure. Where failure depends on the user of the product or process, then human er ...
. The terms are used in
forensic engineering
Forensic engineering has been defined as ''"the investigation of failures - ranging from serviceability to catastrophic - which may lead to legal activity, including both civil and criminal".'' It includes the investigation of materials, produc ...
and
structural engineering
Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of man-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and cal ...
when analysing product failure. Failure may occur because either the product is weaker than expected owing to a
stress concentration, or the applied load is greater than expected and exceeds the normal
tensile strength
Ultimate tensile strength (UTS), often shortened to tensile strength (TS), ultimate strength, or F_\text within equations, is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials t ...
,
shear strength
In engineering, shear strength is the strength of a material or component against the type of yield or structural failure when the material or component fails in shear. A shear load is a force that tends to produce a sliding failure on a materi ...
or
compressive strength of the product.
See also
*
Forensic engineering
Forensic engineering has been defined as ''"the investigation of failures - ranging from serviceability to catastrophic - which may lead to legal activity, including both civil and criminal".'' It includes the investigation of materials, produc ...
*
Stress analysis
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
*
Structural engineering
Structural engineering is a sub-discipline of civil engineering in which structural engineers are trained to design the 'bones and muscles' that create the form and shape of man-made structures. Structural engineers also must understand and cal ...
References
* ''Strength of Materials'', 3rd edition, Krieger Publishing Company, 1976, by Timoshenko S.,
* ''Forensic Materials Engineering: Case Studies'' by Peter Rhys Lewis, Colin Gagg, Ken Reynolds, CRC Press (2004).
Engineering failures
Reliability engineering
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