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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