Determine why a material, component or product failed — and what action is most defensible.
Failure analysis is rarely commissioned out of curiosity. It is commissioned because something is already costing money and a decision is waiting on the answer.
Before anything else: preserve the evidence. Do not clean, cut, re-dry or re-process failed parts. Keep the failed items, unused retains of the same material lot, packaging and labels, process data and machine settings from the period in question, and any photographs taken as found.
More investigations are weakened by well-intentioned handling than by anything that happens in a laboratory. If the matter could become a dispute, that handling record becomes part of the evidence too.
“Why did it fail” has many true answers at different depths. Whether you need to release a held batch, defend a claim, requalify a supplier or redesign a part determines how deep the investigation has to go and what standard of proof it has to meet. That is settled first, because it decides the cost of everything after it.
Failed parts, unfailed parts from the same run, material certificates, drying and moisture records, thermal and residence-time history, regrind practice, tooling and gate design, changes to the resin lot, the additive package or the supplier, and what was different about the period when failures began.
Polymeric and composite parts fail through a limited set of mechanisms, and they leave different signatures: creep, fatigue, impact, molecular degradation, hydrolysis, oxidative or UV attack, environmental stress cracking, chemical attack, filler or fibre debonding, weld-line weakness, residual stress, moisture at the point of processing, and incompatibility introduced by a formulation change. Candidates are ranked before any test is ordered, so testing is used to discriminate between them rather than to produce a general survey.
Analysis is commissioned through an established network of university and industry laboratory partners, with government national laboratories available through collaborators where a specialised resource is needed. Being independent of any one laboratory is deliberate: the instrument is chosen to answer the question, not because it is the one in the building.
Findings are separated from inference. You are told the mechanism, the contributing factors, the evidence behind each conclusion, the confidence attached to it, and what new evidence would change it. A conclusion presented without its limits is not usable in a dispute and is not much use in a plant either.
If litigation is possible, say so at the outset. Work commissioned as a plant investigation and later repurposed as evidence is weaker than work scoped for that purpose from the start. See Expert Witness & Litigation Support.
Polymers, composites, elastomers, coatings and adhesives across product liability, manufacturing defect, field failure, fatigue and fracture cases. Both consumer products and industrial components.
Straightforward cases — a fractured component with clear loading history — typically take two to three weeks from receipt of the sample. Complex litigation matters requiring multiple test methods or third-party laboratory work run six to twelve weeks. You will be told at the outset what the realistic timeframe is.
Yes. Written opinions are structured to meet court standards, address the applicable technical question directly, and survive cross-examination. The principal has testified in federal and state proceedings and is familiar with both Daubert and Frye admissibility standards.
Photographs of the failure, the failed component if it can be preserved, the material specification or datasheet, and a brief description of the service history and the conditions at the time of failure. A short call to discuss what is available is always the best first step.
A short conversation is usually enough to tell whether independent technical review is worth it — and if it is not, you will be told so.
Describe what is happening, what it is costing and what decision is waiting on it. You will get a direct assessment of whether and how this can be investigated.
Discuss Your ChallengeSend the parties and the technical subject matter only — no case details, no documents. Conflicts are cleared before any substantive discussion takes place.
Request a Conflict Check