ABSTRACT
The term failure analysis can be applied to many situations but what we are specically concerned with here is engineering failure analysis (EFA), which may loosely be dened as the objective investigation or analysis into an engineering failure, using the science and analysis of engineering, to reveal the proximate and root causes. The term forensic analysis, or forensic engineering , describes a similar process but the term forensic encompasses matters that relate to the jurisprudence system or the system of laws that exists in a particular area of activity. An engineering failure is said to occur when a component or structure can no longer perform its function safely and reliably, whether through degradation, deformation, wear, or breakage; the conditions would have breached the limit and serviceability states used in design.
