Failure of Materials in Service

What is Failure?

How is it defined?
Is this failure?
What about this?
Or this?
 Familiar Failure
• Conventional
tensile failure
mode that we
are all familiar
with.
Brittle Fracture
Ductile Fracture
Failure in Compression
Failure in Torsion
Failure in Bending
Stiff stuff getting bent!
Failure in little bits!
Sneaky failure
Fatigue Failure
Quietly in the hidden places
failure
You would not be worrying
about this failure at the
time it occurred!
Will you ever fly in a plane
again!
Bolting the door after the …..
Expensive can-opener!
A new slant on bird ingestion
Where did that runway go?
Brake failure or pilot error?
Pardon me sir!
This was frozen when I took
off!
A watery grave
 Why Failure?
All unanticipated mechanical failures
must have a cause:
• Designed incorrectly
• Manufactured incorrectly
• Mis-maintained
• Mis-operated
 Typical modes of failure
• tensile, compressive & shear
• bending (buckling)
• distortion, residual loads.
• creep (temperature / stress related)
• thermal shock
• corrosion (including stress corrosion)
• ageing
• wear, fretting
• fatigue
• And lastly, cracks in the fuselage!