Prevent the Next Failure! Act Now!

Modern industries are fully automated and these perform without too much of human intervention. This is true for the Automotive or the Aerospace Industries as it is for the Pharmaceutical or Pulp and Paper. Most of the processes are now under robotic controls that are studied from inside glass consoles that display instrumented gauges and dials. There is redundancy in case of failure of primary systems and adequate audio as well as visual warnings. However, failures will take place. Failure analysis is mandatory to find the cause of the failure, analyze and take corrective measures to prevent the next one from happening.

In the engineering industry failure analysis could reveal the cause to be either due to a material defect, design failure, human error or an external cause such as a bird hit in mid-air resulting in an engine failure. The analysis is carried out mainly in materials testing laboratories to rule out the cause to be due to a material defect.

The various facilities of materials testing could include laboratories to assess various compositions or the several properties of the sample that is under investigation. Chemical testing and analysis at the macro level and under a scanning electron microscope, gas chromatography or simple metallography at the micro level could assess the compositions. The properties of materials that are assessed could be the UTS or the yield strength, torsional strength, elasticity, bendability, creep or fatigue. In complicated cases help is often taken of mathematical or computer modeling and simulation studies.

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How One Failure Can Prevent Many

It’s absolutely true that a failure in the industry, unfortunate though it maybe, can actually prevent other failures. Imagine what would happen in a combat aircraft production industry. Supposing one of the turbine blades fractures and the broken pieces of the blade bring the engine to a deafening halt. The shattered blade pieces are analyzed in a materials testing laboratory for its contents. Another blade from the same batch is tested for creep and thermal stresses. A series of tests is run as a part of failure analysis to determine whether the failure was due to poor material, damage due to a foreign object or some extraneous causes. Here the facilities provided by materials testing laboratories could cover mechanical properties such as hardness, impact strength, UTS and bendability or creep resistance and metallurgical properties concerning the internal structure at the micro level.

Analytical equipment such as a Scanning Electron Microscope and Gas Chromatography could also be used in isolated cases while carrying out failure analysis of a failed component or part. Finally, the result of such analysis is expected to conclusively determine the actual cause of the failure. Failures are caused due to poor material, workmanship, design, maintenance or human error and in some cases due to an extraneous cause such as a foreign object. The result of the analysis will define how subsequent failures could be prevented. These measures could involve a change in material used or the design of the failed component among other options that may introduce special maintenance checks.

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The Intricacies of Pipeline Testing

Pipelines form the core part of some industries such as Refining and Petrochemical. Because of the likelihood of huge losses if pipeline defects are not detected in time pipeline inspection assumes significance in terms of the need for it to be carried out on a regular basis. In certain cases, such as offshore drilling the likelihood of corrosion in pipelines makes this need that much more acute. It’s also likely that minor leakage that may be draining out tens of thousands of dollars worth of oil every day may go undetected because of the pipelines being submerged. Then there is the problem of pipelines being hundreds of miles long and passing through almost inaccessible places. This too makes pipeline inspection a nightmare for all concerned, those who run the industry and those who are in charge of executing the inspection.

Typically the inspection of pipelines is carried out by visual means, Magnetic Testing, Radiographic Testing, Specialized Testing and Ultrasonic Testing. While the Magnetic Testing may use the Magnetic Flux Leakage Induction (MFL) or the modified method using the inline inspection tool (MFL-ILI) the Radiographic Testing could use the services such as Gamma Radiography, X-ray and DR or Digital Radiography. The Ultrasonic Testing services include Acoustic Ranger, Accuscan, Advanced Flaw Sizing, Corrosion Sizing and Electromagnetic Acoustic Transmission or EMAT and the Phased Array (PA). The Phased Array method uses the principle of deploying a number of probes that sweep a high-resolution beam to reveal the internal imagery of the object and hence its defects.

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