Course Description
Instructor: Gamini Mendis
Fee: $1,350
Offerings
Click the date link to register for that course section.
Educational Goals
In this two-day course, a comprehensive strategy for finding the root cause of failure in plastics parts will be discussed. Aspects of design, processing, materials, and user-driven failures will be explored through case studies of actual failures in medical, automotive, electronic, and industrial appliance applications. Choosing the right analytical technique for these types of forensic engineering will be a strong focus of the course, with demos and hands-on lab experience provided for several techniques such as ESEM, FTIR microscopy, and thermal analysis.
Who Should Attend
Anyone who has ever been involved in trying to determine why a plastic part fails a quality test, fails during assembly, or fails during final use by the customer. This course also will be beneficial to anyone involved in the material selection phase of a project or anyone who just wants a deeper understanding of why plastic parts fail. Among those who can benefit from this two-day workshop are process and project engineers, quality engineers, manufacturing engineers, part designers, and anyone involved in the operation of analytical equipment or in analyzing data.
Course Outline
- Introduction to forensic plastics engineering and failure analysis
- Case Study: Cracked computer stylus – Whose fault is it?
- Using FEA in failure analysis
- Crack initiation and propagation
- Tools of the Trade: Microscopy and ESEM
- Detecting material degradation
- Case Study: Quality of recycled blends
- Tools: Thermal analysis and FTIR
- Polymer Wear
- Case Study: Failed bearing applications
- Flow patterns and polymer solidification conditions during manufacturing