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Failure Investigation: Failed Bond
Vice President of Professional Services
FVE is a Product Design / Product Development Consultant, Commercial and Military Transportation Specialist with world-class expertise in business development, project management, product design, development and analysis, design, development, production and support of commercial and military transportation and aerospace products.
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Failed Bond between Thermal Insulating Cork and Aluminum Alloy Substrate
Client manufactured an enclosed raceway carrying cables and sensitive electronic components. The raceway was designed for exposure to a short duration, high thermal convective and radiant heating environment. The raceway covers were insulated by cork to minimize heat transfer and prevent overheating of the enclosed cables and components. Approximately six months after production and prior to exposure to operational environments, the raceway cover insulating cork was found to be largely disbonded and therefore unable to perform its function.
A failure investigation team was assembled to determine root cause and corrective action. The failure investigation team was composed of four PhD material scientists in relevant fields, the engineer responsible for design of the raceway system, the manager of production for the raceways, and this Expert who led the investigation.
The raceway is approximately sixty foot long, two foot wide, composed of several panels of varying length and formed from 6064-T6 aluminum sheet with an anodized finish. The insulator was high density cork composition material made with 10/20 cork granule and a special binder for high heat resistance. A commonly available sprayable high temperature adhesive was used to bond the cork to the raceway panels.
The failure investigation team acquired all readily available forensic evidence including samples of failed and healthy raceway panels. Initial inspection revealed bond failures occurring between the adhesive and the substrate panels as well as between the adhesive and the cork. No failures were observed in the cork or in the aluminum. The sprayable adhesive system used was recommended by the manufacturer as appropriate for the cork and anodized aluminum materials.
This Expert led the failure investigation team through a brainstorming session to identify all conceivable causes for failure of the bonds (adhesive to aluminum and adhesive to cork). A Kepner-TregoeŽ weighted decision analysis technique was employed by the team to rank the failure scenarios from most to least likely. Each failure scenario was then assigned a primary investigator from the team.
With participation of the full failure investigation team, each primary investigator presented a logical set of tasks (e.g., analysis, test, microscopy) to prove or disprove each failure scenario. Several DOEs (design of experiments) were set up to investigate the statistical variation of contributing factors within each failure scenario. During conduct of the investigation tasks the board continued to meet regularly to review progress and adjust the course of the investigation as it evolved.
Eventually numerous failure scenarios were determined to not be credible. Once all testing and investigations were complete, eleven failure scenarios were deemed to be credible. The team again employed a Kepner-TregoeŽ weighted decision analysis technique to rank the remaining failure scenarios from most credible to least credible. Additional testing and analysis was then conducted on the remaining eleven failure scenarios.
Once completed, the final round of testing and analysis showed that five failure scenarios were fully credible while the remaining six were either highly unlikely or a possible contributing factor. Corrective actions were identified for all eleven failure scenarios.
A full program review board was convened and the failure investigation presented the results of their investigation, the five most likely causes, the six unlikely/contributing factors and recommendations for implementation of corrective actions.
Corrective actions were implemented, fielded raceway covers were returned for remanufacture and new raceway covers were produced using the improved processes. No failures were experienced for raceway covers produced or remanufactured with the corrective actions in place.
Read other articles by this KKAI Associate:
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Kevin Kennedy & Associates, Inc.
Rapid Response Engineering® Solutions
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