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A: This is the process of defining the fundamental reason for the failure of an engineered component or system to serve its intended purpose. Secondary factors that contributed to the failure are also established in the analysis. In most cases an important part of the analysis is to define suitable corrective actions to prevent reoccurrence of the same or related failures.

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A: The primary precautions are to record the conditions found immediately after the failure – before anything is disturbed - and then to carefully gather and protect affected parts and appropriate samples at the site. More details are provided here >

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A: It is the application of the art and science of engineering to assist in the proper completion of legal proceedings that require the resolution of one or more engineering questions. The practice of this activity typically requires the services of a licensed, professional engineer with knowledge and experience in the technical issues in question. An integral part of the activity is completing a failure analysis to define the fundamental cause (or causes) of the failure or accident at the center of the litigation.

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A: He or she is a licensed professional engineer who has both the specific background to provide knowledgeable opinions on the technical issues in question and the personal qualities to perform well and objectively during all stages of the legal process. More details are provided here >

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A: Depending on the specific material and conditions in a given service, one or more of the following may occur : stress overload, fatigue, one or more of the various forms of corrosion, one of the various forms of wear or one of the various forms of high temperature failure.

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A: First the material must have the required physical properties to meet the specific service conditions of the intended application. Secondly the selected material ideally will meet all criteria with the least life-cycle cost of the alternatives over the design service life of the application. More details on a range of criteria and some alternative ways to think about material selection decisions are provided here >

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A: General (or uniform) corrosion, galvanic attack, pitting and crevice attack, intergranular attack (IGA), erosion-corrosion, stress-corrosion cracking, corrosion fatigue and microbiological influenced corrosion (MIC).

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A: These analyses include a total of all the several types of costs – and their timing – involved with installing and using a given engineering material over the desired service life. Initial, installed cost is always included but the true total cost often also includes several other likely, future costs. Financial discount factors are used to derive either a total present value cost or a total annual cost of using each material evaluated. This process permits rational comparisons of alternative materials or methods because each alternative likely will have different initial and future costs plus the latter likely will occur at different points during the life of the application.

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A: This approach provides a realistic picture of the overall total cost of using each alternative material. Unfortunately, it’s common to make material selections solely on the basis of the lowest initial cost. Often this is unrealistic because potentially large future costs such as revenue losses during unplanned shutdowns for multiple replacements of a lowest-initial-cost material are neglected.

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