Failure investigation of polymer and composite material structures in the mechanical engineering industry

Despite efforts to process high-quality composite material parts, some untimely failures may occur because of defects introduced during manufacturing, because of data that were not taken into account during design, or because of a misuse of the materials' structure. A skilled postmortem failure analysis provides many pieces of information that shed light on the process and the design phase, improving the quality of the structures. The failure analysis of mechanical composite material parts follows the same system as for metals. It is based on different methods of investigation that complement each other and enable us to hypothesize and conceive different and gradually more and more precise ways of research to reach the most probable result. This work shows how failure problems involving composite materials in the mechanical industry may be solved. We also consider the economical aspects of failure in the industrial world with the skill and knowledge acquired by the personnel of CETIM. (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1996.