Fractography and Failure Analysis

This book presents fractography and failure analysis at a level that is accessible for non-expert readers, without losing scientific rigor. It offers a comprehensive description of fracture surfaces in engineering materials, with an emphasis on metals, and of the methodology for the observation of fracture surfaces. It also discusses in detail the main fracture mechanisms and their corresponding fracture surfaces, including brittle, ductile, fatigue, and environmental fractures. The last chapter is dedicated to the use of fractography in determining of the causes component failure. In modern engineering, the analysis of fractured components is a common practice in many fields, such as integrity management systems, materials science research, and failure investigations. As such this book is useful for engineers, scientists, engineering students, loss adjuster surveyors and any professional dealing with fractured components.

Author Biography

Jorge Luis Gonzalez Velazquez is a metallurgical engineer and Master of Science from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) of Mexico, and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in the USA. His postdoctoral research was on environmentally assisted cracking in Japan. Currently, he is a professor and researcher at the Metallurgy and Materials Department of the IPN and director of the Mechanical Integrity Assessment Group, an organization with over 200 researchers and engineers housed at the IPN and with more than 20 years of experience in research and providing fitness-for-service, fracture, fracture mechanics and failure analysis services for the oil and gas industry in Mexico and other countries. He has published several books on fracture mechanics, mechanical metallurgy and pipeline engineering in Spanish.