Rotating machinery and pressure equipment fail according to well-understood mechanics — fatigue, fitness, and load. We determine which one governed, from the physical evidence, to a standard that holds up in court.
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Mechanical components fail in ways that are, in hindsight, almost always predictable — a bearing spalls because contact stress exceeded what the steel and the lubricant film could sustain together; a shaft snaps because a stress riser concentrated a cyclic load past the endurance limit; a vessel ruptures because a flaw grew to critical size under a pressure it had carried safely for years. None of that predictability helps until after the fact, which is why these investigations start with the fracture surface, the wear scar, or the deformed geometry and work backward to the load history, the material, and the maintenance record that produced it. This department covers the failure modes where mechanics, contact stress, and pressure govern the outcome, from a spalled bearing race to a full-bore pipeline rupture.
Each specialization area covers a distinct failure mechanism with its own physics, examination protocol, and governing standards. Start with the one that matches your incident.
Spalling, wear, and lubrication-related bearing failures — root cause behind unplanned downtime and warranty disputes.
investigateFatigue, hydrogen embrittlement, and self-loosening in bolts, studs, and threaded fasteners — the small part behind large failures.
investigatePitting, scoring, and tooth fracture in gear sets — root cause behind gearbox failures and warranty claims.
investigatePressure-boundary failures in pipelines, tanks, and vessels — from crack growth to critical size to full-bore rupture.
investigateCavitation, seal failure, and mechanical breakdown in pumps and compressors — root cause behind unplanned outages.
investigateTorsional and bending fatigue, keyway cracking, and fretting fatigue in rotating shafts — the root of many drivetrain failures.
investigateCreep, high-cycle fatigue, and foreign-object damage in turbine blades — root cause behind catastrophic and warranty failures.
investigateMechanical investigations move from macroscopic evidence — fracture surfaces, wear patterns, deformation — down to the microstructure, preserving the load history recorded in the metal at every step.
Technical briefings and case analyses on bearing, gear, shaft, and pressure-equipment failures — written by the people who investigate them.
After a blade liberates, the worst-looking damage is almost never the origin. Identifying the first blade governs whether the event was a defect, an ingestion or an operating problem.
readHot corrosion, oxidation and erosion rarely break a blade themselves. They consume the coating and thin the section, and the fracture that follows gets recorded as the cause.
readCreep, high-cycle fatigue and thermal-mechanical fatigue crack blades in the same places but run on different clocks. Separating them decides whether the issue is material, vibratory or operational.
readA shaft is loaded by everything attached to it. Misalignment, torsional vibration and resonance can drive cyclic stress far above what a steady-state calculation predicts.
readShafts crack where the section changes. Whether that is a design deficiency, a manufacturing departure, or neither depends on what the allowable already accounted for.
readThe plane a shaft separated on, the texture across it, and the size of the region that tore last each record how the shaft was loaded and for how long.
readWear-out failures cluster near the design or rating life of the component — the L10 life of a bearing, the AGMA rating life of a gear set, the fatigue life implied by the loading history of a shaft. A failure well short of that life, or a failure with a fracture or wear signature inconsistent with normal degradation, points toward a material defect, an installation error, or an operating condition outside the design envelope. The distinction is drawn from the physical evidence and the design basis, not from when the part happened to fail.
The failed component itself, adjacent parts it interacted with, any lubricant or debris present at the failure site, and the maintenance and operating records covering its service life. Do not clean, degrease, weld-repair, or discard anything before it has been documented and photographed as found.
Frequently, yes. Manufacturing and material defects tend to be intrinsic and localized, and are identified by comparing the failed part against its own specification and against unused stock. Installation errors — misalignment, incorrect torque, improper fit — leave characteristic evidence at the interface where the part was assembled. Maintenance and operating causes show up as wear, contamination, or load conditions inconsistent with the specified service. Separating the three is usually the question with the most money attached.
It depends on the component. Bearing work references ABMA and ISO 281 for rating life. Gear work references AGMA 2001 and ISO 6336. Fastener work references ASTM F606, SAE J429, and ASME B18. Pressure equipment references ASME B31, ASME Section VIII, and API 510/570/653. Pump and compressor work references API 610, 617, and 674-676. The applicable code depends on the component and the industry, and it is usually the starting point for the investigation.
Describe the incident. We will scope it and connect you with the right expert — usually within one business day.