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The 100th anniversary of the death of Adolf Martens will be commemorated on July 24th, 2014. He is eponymously remembered today through the term martensite, which was first used by Floris Osmond as a name for the metastable phase that results from rapid quenching of carbon steels. Born in 1850 near to Hagenow in the region Mecklenburg, Germany, Martens was one of the pioneers of materials engineering in 19th century Europe.
Martens began his career working for the Prussian Eastern Railway before joining the Royal Industrial Academy in Berlin in 1880. In 1884, he was appointed director of the Royal Mechanical Experimental Station, a small institution associated to the academy. Failure analysis was continuously practiced at this institution, which became later the nucleus of the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), for the 110 years since. The history of Martens will be dealt with in an in-depth article in this special issue.
Since the 19th century, failure analysis techniques have been refined, and new methods of chemical analysis and non-destructive testing have been developed; however, the basic approach to failure analysis has not changed much since Martens' days. The basic tenets of failure analysis remain things like on-site inspection, extensive visual 'non-destructive' inspection, developing an understanding of the background story, performing materials testing, and 'connecting the dots.' Martens introduced and developed experimental techniques like macro photography, fractography, metallography, hardness measurements, and mechanical testing. Modern failure analysts continue adding even more techniques to this list, leading to a more interdisciplinary approach which many would say is the only way to find the root causes of complex failure events.
The present special issue of EFA presents an overview of more than 100 years of failure analysis at BAM and its predecessors, closing the circle from the beginnings of modern failure analysis done by Martens himself in the 1890s to its present-day application.
This special issue starts with an excursion back to Martens' work and innovations and presents a newly translated original manuscript of Martens from 1890. Whereas some papers of Martens and his co-workers are well documented, only little can be found about failure analysis in the period from 1914 to the 1950s. Most documents of this period have not survived until today. Beginning in the 1960s more and more significant works are preserved, which were using the interdisciplinary approach of Martens. Since the beginning of the digital age in the 1980s almost all text documents are accessible, whereas digital images were stored since the 1990s. Since then the problem is no longer accessibility but copyright issues that prevent many interesting case studies from being published. Maybe the next generation of failure scientists can reveal some of them later on.
Investigations on the breakdown of a heat recovery steam generator during the initial operation run
(2014)
Several years ago, in 2003, an industrial heat recovery steam generator in charge of generating process steam in a petrochemical refinery was installed and prepared for initial operation. The steam generator enclosed an evaporator section and a superheater section consisting mainly of bundles of tubes with the longest up to several metres in length. During initial operation test runs severe leakages in the evaporator and superheater modules became noticeable. The test runs were stopped and after disassembly, through-wall cracks in several tube bends were found. BAM was commissioned to carry out the investigations in order to find out the reasons for the failure of the tubes. During on-site inspection a number of relevant damaged components and parts were selected and taken away to the laboratories for detailed inspection. Planned analyses were to comprise metallographic as well as fractographic investigations, mechanical fatigue testing and experimental as well as finite element vibration analyses on specimens and components. Soon, the fracture mechanism was found to be mechanical fatigue due to the fact that the examined fracture surfaces showed the very characteristic beachmarks and colouring patterns. To identify the particular loading and time at which crack initiation and crack propagation took place, experimental and numerical vibration analyses of specific tubes as well as mechanical fatigue tests on tube bends were carried out. Thus it was possible to identify the eigenfrequencies of individual tubes, to estimate the dynamic response as well as the nominal stresses and, hence, experimentally characterise the in-service fatigue strength of the components. Mechanical and thermal comparative tests on tube bends were performed simulating the conditions during the initial test run in order to get crack surfaces comparable to that of the originally damaged components. Thereby it became obvious that the fatigue cracks were initiated by vibrations the tube bundles were exposed to during rail transport from the manufacturers site to the place of installation. Based on these results, the damaged components could be repaired or exchanged without modification of the construction, but the rules relating packaging and securing for shipping had to be revised.
The roll-on-roll-off passenger ferry MV ESTONIA sank during the night of 28 September 1994 in the Baltic Sea. In October 2000, divers recovered two palm-sized test pieces from the front bulkhead of the wreck. The investigators analysed these specimens to determine whether there were any indications of deliberate blasting. Since the wreck had been submerged for almost six years, it was clear that chemical traces would not be present on the surfaces of the test pieces. Therefore, the investigators performed comparative tests on shipbuilding steel to find a microstructural criterion that exclusively characterises a blast. The shipyard Jos. L. Meyer, Germany, had built the ESTONIA and supplied shipbuilding steel plates similar to that used for building the vessel in 1979/1980. The comparative tests comprised mechanical tests, shot peening tests and blasting tests using different explosives. Testing demonstrated that blasting always formed twinned ferrite grains in the microstructure over the whole cross-section of each of the 8 mm thick comparative plates. Although one of the original test pieces of the ESTONIA showed deformation twins, this was only confined up to 0.4 mm underneath the surfaces and not spread over the whole cross-section. Comparative shot peening tests produced the very same pattern of subsurface deformation twins. Therefore, the twins detected in the microsection of the test pieces of the ESTONIA wreck traced back to the shot peening process performed by the shipyard in 1979/1980 and not to a deliberate blast.
On July 9, 2008 a high speed train derailed in Cologne main Station, Germany at a low speed because an axle was broken. Fortunately, the derailment happened at a low speed so that nobody was injured. The reason for the broken axle was investigated and it turned out that most likely large inclusions located shortly undemeath the surface in a T-transition were the origin of the final crack. Basing on that result, a systematic investigation on existing safety assessments of railway axles was performed. This results in an analysis of the production process of axles and in a critical review of existing of existing assessments. Improvements and future developments are outlined.
Self-excited vibrations with large amplitudes in natural wind may occur at slender structural elements with low damping. Because of the different designs (e. g. using solid sections today instead of cables for tension elements in the past) the susceptibility to wind induced oscillations has increased. Those wind induced vibrations of profiles with specific cross section geometry which are motion induced and therefore self-exciting are called 'galloping vibrations'. Especially systems with elements that are highly tensile loaded and undamped, like hangers of bridges or tension bars of cranes, are sensitive to wind induced vibrations. Therefore more and more fatigue problems caused by galloping oscillations have occurred in the 1990s. This paper describes exemplary the collapses of two modern cranes of different design and manufacturers. During standstill periods, both cranes suffered from wind induced vibrations of the tension bars, which bear up the counterweights. The failure analysis process to identify and explain the fatigue fractures as well as the comparative experiments and simulation to verify that they were caused by wind induced galloping-vibrations is described. It is shown, which parameters led to galloping-vibrations of the tension bars and how their onset wind speed and the amplitudes can be estimated with more accuracy by a non-linear and non-stationary approach. Furthermore it is shown that such dynamic stresses caused fatigue failure of the tension bars for the counter weights and subsequently collapsing of the cranes.
For loss prevention knowledge and results gained by these investigations should be put at disposal to engineers working on this field of design. In the meantime, a contribution to development of appropriate technical standards on structural steelwork was given by the research works on galloping. Although new standards were introduced, which consider wind induced vibrations, such failures still occur. (Reference to the paper 'Fatigue crack in railway bridge hanger due to wind induced vibrations – failure analysis, measures and remaining service life estimation' in this same Special Issue 'A tribute to A. Martens' 2014).
The application of implants e.g. for osteosynthesis or substitution of worn out joints is common practice since decades. Successes in surgery and orthopedics are highly dependent on the use of artificial parts for implanting into the human body. Over the years the number of surgical procedures and the number of different implants were growing rapidly. Implants, however, are exposed to complex mechanical, corrosive and tribological loads along with restriction in geometric dimension. While being essentially successful, the sheer number of cases leads to a rising number of implant failures. Such failures are painful for the affected patients and are very costly.
The failure cases presented in this paper occurred from 1981 to 2016. The predominant failure mechanism of all kinds of implants is fatigue fracture. Fatigue cracks are initiated due to a whole bunch of reasons: Material defects and fabrication defects are rare events. The main factors are cyclic overload due to improper fitting with delayed bone healing, corrosion and unauthorized modification of the implant during surgery
In July 2008 an ICE3 high speed train rated for 330 km/h service speed derailed during departure from Cologne, Central Station, Germany, due to fatigue failure of one of the driving axles. The train was emergency stopped immediately and, due to low travel speed at this point, no serious injuries occurred to passengers. Referring to public interest, the public attorneys office solicited the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) for the analysis of the root cause.
No deviations from specification were found in the geometries of the basic parts of the bogie or the wheelset assembly. Inspection of the axle fragments using standard acoustic non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques revealed no additional cracks and no indications of oversized discontinuities. Metallographic and chemical inspection of the axle material and its microstructure revealed all parameters to be acceptable except for an elevated impurity level.
The fracture surfaces of the axle fragments were heavily damaged due to some continued travel after final breakage on the high speed line before Cologne Central Station. Extensive visual inspection of the remaining beachmarks was carried out to find the origin of the fatigue crack. The region of the crack origin was located near the axle surface but could not be analysed in detail due to secondary damage. Fatigue was identified as the mechanism of crack growth until final fracture, but the reasons for crack initiation initially remained unclear.
Neither standard NDT techniques nor metallography according to the relevant axle specifications were able to identify inclusions in the material that could have served as crack initiation sites. However, discontinuities were detected near the crack origin in micro computer tomography and ultrasonic immersion testing. Subsequent metallographic sample preparation was targeted to specific areas based on the location coordinates of the flaws identified by these NDT techniques. These revealed non-metallic inclusions that were much larger than admissible for the relevant specifications. It is likely that the fatigue crack in the highly loaded axle volume initiated at those non-metallic inclusions.