Failure Analysis and Forensic Engineering of Plastic Components

Seminar Overview

This is ETS's flagship forensic seminar, and the crown jewel of the curriculum: it is built directly from a structured corpus of 904 plastic-engineering investigation records distilled from 284 primary source blocks — including 22 expert reports, 29 legal filings, and 7 depositions from real product-liability and warranty litigation. The corpus encodes 126 failure signatures from actual litigated case failures (the 18 mm circumferential coupling-nut fracture at the seamline, door-latch premature unlatching, roof-panel delayed warpage, skin/foam delamination warranty waves), 57 investigation methods, 135 test protocols, and 132 decision criteria. No vendor slide deck can teach this: the material is verbatim from the record — what failed, why it failed, how it was proven, and how the finding survived challenge.

The seminar walks the complete forensic arc. Day one builds the failure-mode taxonomy for plastics (ductile overload, brittle fracture, fatigue, creep rupture, stress cracking, environmental degradation, contamination, processing-induced weakness) and the fractography and physical-evidence reading that distinguishes them. Day two goes deep on the recurring signatures: weld-line and seamline failures, stress cracking, delayed warpage and creep-driven distortion, and contamination/adhesion failures — each worked from the real case records, presented generically ("Fracture Case: coupling-nut seamline") because the mechanism is the lesson. Day three teaches the engineering-legal interface: chain-of-causation construction, evidence handling and report writing that will hold up in court, depositions, and defending your findings under cross-examination.

Attendees leave able to run a defensible failure investigation: preserve and document evidence, select and execute the right test protocols, build a chain of causation that distinguishes root cause from contributing causes, write an expert-grade report, and stand behind it in deposition and trial. This is the differentiating ETS capability — Expert Witness & Litigation Engineering — condensed into three days.

Ideal Learner

• Failure analysis and materials engineers who investigate plastic part failures
• Design and product engineers whose components face warranty, recall, or litigation exposure
• Quality and warranty managers handling field-failure waves and supplier disputes
• Attorneys, claims specialists, and insurance professionals who need to read plastic failure evidence
• Automotive suppliers, medical device, plumbing/fitting, consumer product, and industrial component manufacturers

Learning Objectives

• Classify plastic part failures with a rigorous taxonomy (ductile/brittle overload, fatigue, creep rupture, ESC/stress cracking, environmental, contamination, processing) and justify the classification from physical evidence
• Read fracture surfaces: crack-initiation location, arrest lines, beach marks, crazing, discoloration, and the signatures that separate design failure from process failure from abuse
• Diagnose the recurring litigation signatures — weld-line/seamline fracture, stress cracking, delayed warpage/creep, delamination, contamination-driven adhesion loss — using the corpus's real case methods
• Construct a chain of causation suitable for expert testimony: evidence preservation, test protocol selection, alternative-cause elimination, and the decision criteria used to commit to a finding
• Produce a court-ready report and defend it: document structure, depositions, cross-examination pressure points, and the disciplines that keep findings defensible

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.