MME8203: Forensic Materials Engineering

The course provides participants with an understanding of scientific and engineering investigation methods and tools to assess potential sources, causes and solutions for prevention of failure due to natural accidents, fire, high and low speed impacts, design defects, improper selection of materials, manufacturing defects, improper service conditions, inadequate maintenance and human error. 

Course Objectives 

• Study the mechanisms responsible for degradation of a variety of materials classes (metals, ceramics, polymers, electronic materials). 
• To design strategies to eliminate or minimize materials degradation.  
• To analyze material failures.  
• To correct material failures. 

 
Learning Outcomes 
After studying this course, you should be able to:  

• Analyze the cause of failures in polymer products 
• Recognize safety-critical polymer components in products 
• Describe different failure modes, using conceptual and engineering diagrams, such as fault-tree analysis diagrams 
• Distinguish between non-specification features and defects in polymer products. 
• Suggest ways of reducing the effects of defects extract key information from standards, specifications, codes of practice, or technical literature and apply that information to product failures.