Catastrophic Engineering Failure

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Catastrophic Engineering
Failure:
What it means
and
what you can do about it

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
What is catastrophic Failure?

Examples

What to do about it
Topics

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
Sudden catastrophic failure of a system

Recovery is impossible

Often leads to cascade systems failure

Often used for structural failure

Extended to other engineering failure
What is catastrophic Failure ?

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Examples
• BP Gulf of Mexico
• Columbia Space Shuttle
• Ray Rail bridge
• South Fork dam
• De Havilland Comet
• Space Shuttle Challenger

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Tay Bridge

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Tay Rail Bridge Disaster of 1879
• Centre half mile of bridge destroyed
• When the train was crossing in a storm
• Terrible design
• Replacement was a separate
structure

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South Fork dam in 1889
• Located near South Fork Pennsylvania, USA
• 20 million tons of water burst through
• Less than well-engineered repairs to old dam
• Raised the lake level
• Several days of unprecedented rainfall
• Dam broke and water destroyed several towns
• 2209 people killed
• Change to legislation from fault based to strict
liability

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De Havilland Comet

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De Havilland Comet
• World's first commercial jet liner to reach production
• Aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland
Ghost turbo jet engines buried into wings
• Low noise pressurised cabin
• Catastrophic metal fatigue leading to aircraft tearing
apart in mid flight
• Cause traced to window installation methodology
plus pressurisation
• Initially, onboard fire was blamed

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Space Shuttle Challenger

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Space Shuttle Challenger
• Twenty fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle
Program
• Destruction of Challenger 73 seconds after lift-off
• Death of all 7 crew members
• Failure of an O-ring seal on one of the solid rocket
boosters
• Flamethrower-like flare impinged upon one of the two
after booster attach struts
• Catastrophic structural failure

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Space Shuttle Columbia

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Space Shuttle Columbia
• Space Shuttle mission launched by
NASA
• Multidisciplinary microgravity and
science research mission
• Seven member crew
• Disintegration during re-entry
• Piece of foam that broke off
during launch and damaged
thermal protection components
causing excessive heat buildup

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Do you have any examples of catastrophic failure ?
• List any examples that you can think of by
typing in the text area to the left of this
• Any suggestions – great or small - would be
great
AND – if you can...
• A suggested cause
And
• A suggested fix to prevent this happening in
future

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Primary causes of Engineering Disasters
• Human factors
• Design flaws
• Materials failures
• Extreme conditions or environments
• Combinations

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Primary causes of Engineering Disasters
• Insufficient knowledge .....................36%
• Underestimation of influence ............. 16%
• Ignorance, carelessness, .................. 14%
• Forgetfulness, error ................................. 13%
• Relying upon others without sufficient control . 9%
• Objectively unknown situation .....................7%
• Imprecise definition of responsibilities .......... 1%
• Choice of bad quality ................................ 1%
• Other ................................................ 3%

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As engineering professionals:
• We have to strive ALWAYS
for a zero accident
environment.
• Our most important task at
all times
• No matter what the situation

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Conclusion
• Risk Management critical
• Lateral thinking
• Anticipating the totally unexpected
• Re-assess original assumptions
• Cross check
• Multiple teams solving one problem
• Fail safe
• And as Robert de Niro remarked:
• If there is any doubt – there is NO
DOUBT

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Thank You For Your Interest
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