Environmental Stress Cracking & Environmental Crazing

The quiet field-failure killer — ESC mechanism, the innocent media that trigger it, screening and confirmation testing, and the design levers that prevent it.

Private cohorts & on-site
Format: 2-day (8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.)
Level: Advanced
Location: Scheduled on demand · on-site at your facility or a regional venue
Date(s): Not yet scheduled for open enrollment. Get notified when it is, or book it privately for your team.
Includes: Certificate of Completion · printed slide binder · take-home reference text

Get notified when this course is scheduled

One email when dates are set. Or skip the wait: run it as a private cohort, on-site at your plant.

Talk to us about a private cohort
  • One email, no sequence
  • Never shared
  • Reply within one business day

Faculty

Faculty details for this seminar will be announced with the full schedule.

Fees

Early: $1,895 (payment 4+ weeks ahead)
Standard: $2,095 (check/ACH) · $2,165 (card)

Group discount: $200 off per attendee for 3+ from the same organization.

Also Available

  • Corporate on-site delivery at your facility
  • Private cohort sessions
  • Digital curriculum licensing

Seminar Overview

ESC is the polymer failure mode that quietly causes the most field failures — parts that pass every short-term test and then crack months later under load plus an 'innocent' chemical. an affiliated engineering firm's Polymers & Chemistry practice has investigated ESC across automotive, medical, packaging, and industrial components. This seminar teaches the mechanism, the media interactions from the real case record, the test protocols that confirm ESC, and the design levers that prevent it — from the practitioners who have testified on it.

Ideal Learner

  • Design and product engineers with parts exposed to oils, greases, detergents, or solvents
  • Materials engineers selecting polymers for aggressive environments
  • Failure-analysis professionals needing to confirm ESC vs. overload
  • Reliability and warranty engineers facing time-delayed cracking
  • Medical device and chemical-processing component engineers

Learning Objectives

  • Explain the ESC mechanism: sustained stress + surface-active agent + susceptible polymer
  • Screen polymer–chemical compatibility and recognize accelerating agents
  • Run and interpret the standard ESC screening tests
  • Confirm ESC vs. overload vs. static fatigue in a failed part
  • Apply design, processing, and material levers to prevent ESC in new parts

Consulting Sessions

Seminar attendees can sign up for individual consulting sessions with the instructor. Sessions are free for registered attendees, first-come first-served — sign up when registering by calling 248-539-0473 or during the seminar.

Seminar Outline

  • Stress + agent + polymer: the three-way interaction
  • Crazing as the precursor: why craze initiation precedes fracture
  • Critical and threshold stress concepts
  • Amorphous polymers vs. semi-crystalline resistance
  • The 'innocent' fluids: oils, greases, detergents, alcohols, plating baths, adhesives
  • Chemical-specific crazing agents and mechanisms
  • Bent-strip, constant-strain, and constant-load methods
  • ASTM D1693 (bent strip) and related protocols
  • Accelerated screening and its limits
  • Fracture features that identify ESC: brittle, multiple cracks, merchant features
  • Distinguishing ESC from static fatigue and overload
  • Test sequences that commit to ESC as root cause
  • Design levers: stress reduction, radii, wall, molded-in stress
  • Processing levers: residual stress from molding, annealing
  • Material levers: crystallinity, molecular weight, rubber modification
  • Automotive, plumbing, packaging, and medical ESC failures from the record
  • Attendee part review: where their part sits on the ESC risk map
  • Building an ESC-resistant part: before/after design exercise

More in Track A — Polymer Failure & Materials Science

Full Course Catalog