Fatigue failures may occur in components subjected to fluctuating (time-dependent) loading as a result of progressive localized permanent damage described by the stages of crack initiation, cyclic crack propagation, and subsequent final fracture after a given number of load fluctuations. This article begins with an overview of fatigue properties and design life. This is followed by a description of the two approaches to fatigue, namely infinite-life criterion and finite-life criterion, along with information on damage tolerance criterion. The article then discusses the characteristics of fatigue fractures followed by a discussion on the effects of loading and stress distribution, and material condition on the microstructure of the material. In addition, general prevention and characteristics of corrosion fatigue, contact fatigue, and thermal fatigue are also presented.

This article provides information on life assessment strategies and conceptually illustrates the interplay of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and fracture mechanics in the damage tolerant approach. It presents information on probability of detection (POD) and probability of false alarm (PFA). The article describes the damage tolerance approach to life management of cyclic-limited engine components and lists the commonly used nondestructive evaluation methods. It concludes with an illustration on the role of NDE, as quantified by POD, in fully probabilistic life management.

This article describes three design-life methods or philosophies of fatigue, namely, infinite-life, finite-life, and damage tolerant. It outlines the three stages in the process of fatigue fracture: the initial fatigue damage leading to crack initiation, progressive cyclic growth of crack, and the sudden fracture of the remaining cross section. The article discusses the effects of loading and stress distribution on fatigue cracks, and reviews the fatigue behavior of materials when subjected to different loading conditions such as bending and loading. The article examines the effects of load frequency and temperature, material condition, and manufacturing practices on fatigue strength. It provides information on subsurface discontinuities, including gas porosity, inclusions, and internal bursts as well as on corrosion fatigue testing to measure rates of fatigue-crack propagation in different environments. The article concludes with a discussion on rolling-contact fatigue, macropitting, micropitting, and subcase fatigue.

Several compressor disks in military fighter and trainer aircraft gas turbine engines cracked prematurely in the bolt hole regions. The disks were made of precipitation-hardened AM355 martensitic stainless steel. Experimental and analytical work was performed on specimens from the fifth-stage compressor disk (judged to be the most crack-prone disk in the compressor) to determine the cause of the failures. Failure was attributed to high-strain low-cycle fatigue during service. It was also determined that the cyclic engine usage assumed in the original life calculations had been under estimated, which led to low-cycle fatigue cracking earlier than expected. Fracture mechanics analysis of the disks was carried out to assess their damage tolerance and to predict safe inspection intervals.

This article provides an overview of the structural design process and discusses the life-limiting factors, including material defects, fabrication practices, and stress. It details the role of a failure investigator in performing nondestructive inspection. The article provides information on fatigue life assessment, elevated-temperature life assessment, and fitness-for-service life assessment.

This article describes the underlying fundamentals, applications, the relevance and necessity of performing proper stress analysis in conducting a failure analysis. It presents an introduction to the stress analysis of bodies containing crack-like imperfections and the topic of fracture mechanics. The fracture mechanics approach is an important part of stress analysis at the tips of sharp cracks or discontinuities. The article reviews fracture mechanics concepts, including linear elastic fracture mechanics, elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, and subcritical fracture mechanics. It also provides information on the applications of fracture mechanics in failure analysis.

This article describes concepts and tools that can be used by the failure analyst to understand and address deformation, cracking, or fracture after a stress-related failure has occurred. Issues related to the determination and use of stress are detailed. Stress is defined, and a procedure to deal with stress by determining maximum values through stress transformation is described. The article provides the stress analysis equations of typical component geometries and discusses some of the implications of the stress analysis relative to failure in components. It focuses on linear elastic fracture mechanics analysis, with some mention of elastic-plastic fracture mechanics analysis. The article describes the probabilistic aspects of fatigue and fracture. Information on crack-growth simulation of the material is also provided.

Despite extensive aircraft landing gear design analyses and tests performed by designers and manufacturers, and the large number of trouble-free landings, aircraft users have experienced problems with and failures of landing gear components. Different data banks and over 200 failure analysis reports were surveyed to provide an overview of structural landing gear component failures as experienced by the Canadian Forces over the last 20 years on more than 20 aircraft types, and to assess trends in failure mechanisms and causes. Case histories were selected to illustrate typical problems, troublesome failure mechanisms, the role of high strength aluminum alloys and steels, and situations where fracture mechanics analyses provided insight into the failures. The two main failure mechanisms were: fatigue occurring mainly in steel components, and corrosion related problems with aluminum alloys. Very few overload failures were noted. A number of causes were identified: design deficiencies and manufacturing defects leading mainly to fatigue failures, and poor materials selection and improper maintenance as the principal causes of corrosion-related failures. The survey showed that a proper understanding of the failure mechanisms and causes, by thorough failure analysis, provides valuable feedback information to designers, operators and maintenance personnel for appropriate corrective actions to be taken.

This article focuses on the types of activities required for the resolution of wear problems. These include examining and characterizing the tribosystem; characterizing and modeling the wear process; obtaining and evaluating wear data; and evaluating and verifying the solution.

Materials selection is an important engineering function in both the design and failure analysis of components. This article briefly reviews the general aspects of materials selection as a concern in proactive failure prevention during design and as a possible root cause of failed parts. It discusses the overall concept of design and describes the role of the materials engineer in the design and materials selection process. The article highlights the significance of materials selection in both the prevention and analysis of failures.

This article briefly introduces the concepts of failure analysis, including root-cause analysis (RCA), and the role of failure analysis as a general engineering tool for enhancing product quality and failure prevention. It initially provides definitions of failure on several different levels, followed by a discussion on the role of failure analysis and the appreciation of quality assurance and user expectations. Systematic analysis of equipment failures reveals physical root causes that fall into one of four fundamental categories: design, manufacturing/installation, service, and material, which are discussed in the following sections along with examples. The tools available for failure analysis are then covered. Further, the article describes the categories of mode of failure: distortion or undesired deformation, fracture, corrosion, and wear. It provides information on the processes involved in RCA and the charting methods that may be useful in RCA and ends with a description of various factors associated with failure prevention.

Optimized modeling of fracture-critical structural components and connections requires the application of elastic-plastic fracture mechanics. Such applications, however, can require sophisticated analytical techniques such as crack tip opening displacement (CTOD), failure assessment diagram (FAD), and deformation plasticity failure assessment diagram (DPFAD). This article presents the origin and description of FAD and addresses R6 FAD using J-integral. It details the fracture criteria of BS 7910. The factors to be considered during the use of FAD and the applications of FAD are also reviewed.

Distortion often is observed in the analysis of other types of failures, and consideration of the distortion can be an important part of the analysis. This article first considers that true distortion occurs when it was unexpected and in which the distortion is associated with a functional failure. Then, a more general consideration of distortion in failure analysis is introduced. Several common aspects of failure by distortion are discussed and suitable examples of distortion failures are presented for illustration. The article provides information on methods to compute load limits, errors in the specification of the material, and faulty process and their corrective measures to meet specifications. It discusses the general process of material failure analysis and special types of distortion and deformation failure.

This article briefly introduces the concepts of failure analysis and root cause analysis (RCA), and the role of failure analysis as a general engineering tool for enhancing product quality and failure prevention. It reviews four fundamental categories of physical root causes, namely, design deficiencies, material defects, manufacturing/installation defects, and service life anomalies, with examples. The article describes several common charting methods that may be useful in performing an RCA. It also discusses other failure analysis tools, including review of all sources of input and information, people interviews, laboratory investigations, stress analysis, and fracture mechanics analysis. The article concludes with information on the categories of failure and failure prevention.

Distortion failure occurs when a structure or component is deformed so that it can no longer support the load it was intended to carry. Every structure has a load limit beyond which it is considered unsafe or unreliable. Estimation of load limits is an important aspect of design and is commonly computed by classical design or limit analysis. This article discusses the common aspects of failure by distortion with suitable examples. Analysis of a distortion failure often must be thorough and rigorous to determine the root cause of failure and to specify proper corrective action. The article summarizes the general process of distortion failure analysis. It also discusses three types of distortion failures that provide useful insights into the problems of analyzing unusual mechanisms of distortion. These include elastic distortion, ratcheting, and inelastic cyclic buckling.

This article discusses the three legal theories on which a products liability lawsuit is based and the issues of hazard, risk, and danger in the context of liability. It describes manufacturing and design defects of various products. The article explains a design that is analyzed from the human factors viewpoint and details the preventive measures of the defects, with examples. It presents four paramount questions relating to the probability of injury which are asked even when one executes all possible preventive measures carefully and thoroughly.

X-ray diffraction (XRD) residual-stress analysis is an essential tool for failure analysis. This article focuses primarily on what the analyst should know about applying XRD residual-stress measurement techniques to failure analysis. Discussions are extended to the description of ways in which XRD can be applied to the characterization of residual stresses in a component or assembly and to the subsequent evaluation of corrective actions that alter the residual-stress state of a component for the purposes of preventing, minimizing, or eradicating the contribution of residual stress to premature failures. The article presents a practical approach to sample selection and specimen preparation, measurement location selection, and measurement depth selection; measurement validation is outlined as well. A number of case studies and examples are cited. The article also briefly summarizes the theory of XRD analysis and describes advances in equipment capability.

Corrosion is the electrochemical reaction of a material and its environment. This article addresses those forms of corrosion that contribute directly to the failure of metal parts or that render them susceptible to failure by some other mechanism. Various forms of corrosion covered are galvanic corrosion, uniform corrosion, pitting, crevice corrosion, intergranular corrosion, selective leaching, and velocity-affected corrosion. In particular, mechanisms of corrosive attack for specific forms of corrosion, as well as evaluation and factors contributing to these forms, are described. These reviews of corrosion forms and mechanisms are intended to assist the reader in developing an understanding of the underlying principles of corrosion; acquiring such an understanding is the first step in recognizing and analyzing corrosion-related failures and in formulating preventive measures.

This article addresses the forms of corrosion that contribute directly to the failure of metal parts or that render them susceptible to failure by some other mechanism. It describes the mechanisms of corrosive attack for specific forms of corrosion such as galvanic corrosion, uniform corrosion, pitting and crevice corrosion, intergranular corrosion, and velocity-affected corrosion. The article contains a table that lists combinations of alloys and environments subjected to selective leaching and the elements removed by leaching.

This article aims to identify and illustrate the types of overload failures, which are categorized as failures due to insufficient material strength and underdesign, failures due to stress concentration and material defects, and failures due to material alteration. It describes the general aspects of fracture modes and mechanisms. The article briefly reviews some mechanistic aspects of ductile and brittle crack propagation, including discussion on mixed-mode cracking. Factors associated with overload failures are discussed, and, where appropriate, preventive steps for reducing the likelihood of overload fractures are included. The article focuses primarily on the contribution of embrittlement to overload failure. The embrittling phenomena are described and differentiated by their causes, effects, and remedial methods, so that failure characteristics can be directly compared during practical failure investigation. The article describes the effects of mechanical loading on a part in service and provides information on laboratory fracture examination.