Fatigue and Fracture Analysis and Investigation

Fatigue and fractures widely happened in infrastructure, equipment, facilities in various industries, resulting in huge economic loss and danger to human lives. Fractures include ductile, brittle and fatigue fracture. Fatigue of materials and components occurs when they are under variable and repeated/cyclic loading(s). UTC can help the clients to conduct failure analysis investigation to avoid or minimise the fatigue and fracture incidents or accident by determining the root cause(s) and improving their fatigue/fracture resistance through contract R & D.

Why Choose UTC for Failure Analysis

UTC is one of leading independant investigation company, consists of experts with more than 35 years failure analysis and accident investigation experience and relevant qualifications.

UTC key staff have successfully led and completed thousands of projects in forensic accident investigation and failure analysis for aerospace, marine, petrochemical, electronic and microelectronic, construction, amusement, oil & gas, transportation industries and governmental agencies

UTC's failure analysis and accident investigation services had been well recongnized by industries and government agencies including Republic of Singapore Air Force, DSTA, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Hyundai (Korea), PUB, SBS Transit, China Taiping Insurance, Rajah & Tann, WongPartnership, Universal Terminal,Takenaka (Japan) and MSIG Insurance, etc.

UTC's failure analysis and accident investigation services are cost-effective, validated by a number of awards on relevant projects from government tenders in GeBiz.

UTC's expert witness and reports on failure analysis and accident investigation were proven and accepted by High Court, State Court, Criminal Court and Arbitration Court.

To contact our experts, please click EMAIL.

Examples of UTC Recently Awarded Failure Analysis and Accident Investigation Projects:

Investigation on various vehicle fires for MSIG Insurance.

Failure analysis and accident investigation on liquid dispenser fire for Consumer Safety Department of SPRING /Enterprise Singapore.

Failure analysis and investigation on building cladding (aluminium composite panel - ACP) fire at Toh Guan Road.

Failure analysis and accident investigation on explosion of electric storage water heater by Consumer Safety Department of SPRING Singapore/Enterprise Singapore.

Failure analysis investigation on damage items at and/or recovered from fire incident sites (two year contract + one year option) by Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

Failure analysis on fractured manhole framesets from Public Utilities Board (PUB).

Click HERE to download the brochure of failure analysis and accident investigation services.

UTC provides following professional services:


• Failure analysis on fatigue and fracture incidents.
• Inspection and examination on fatigue fracture related facilities.
• Contract R & D on improving fatigue strength of materials/components.
• Evaluation on fatigue performance of materials and effects of processing.

Other expert areas, please refer to
• Crane accident investigation and failure analysis
• Failure analysis services
• Forensic accident investigation
• Corrosion Engineering
• Fire investigation.
Traffic accident reconstruction
• Expert witness in litigation and insurance claims.
• Condition assessment
• Design and structural analysis
• Industrial technical training courses:
1. Industrial Failure Analysis - Investigation, causes, mechanisms and prevention
2. Applied Metallurgy - Compositions, microstructure, process and properties of metals and alloys
3. Corrosion - mechanisms, investigation and prevention
4. Fire Investigation
5. Structual analysis in design and failure investigation
6. Human factors in design and accident investigation
Our key experts had provided failure analyis, accident investigation, fire investigation and expert witness services to regional countries and beyond, including Singapore, Malaysia, China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Japan, Korean, The Netherland, Italy, etc.

Recently, UTC had published articles on failure analysis and accident investigation as follows:


• "Improving quality and reliabity through effective failure analysis" was presented in Symposium on Materials Processing, Inspection and Testing held on August 24, 2017, Malaysia.


Click here to read more the presentation report.


• "Forensic investigation on crane accidents" was published in International Journal on Forensic Engineering in 2017.


Click here to read the partial article.
For full article, please contact the publisher.

Other relevant publications on fatigue and fracture analysis / investigation:
• Fatigue failure analysis of gearbox shaft
• Failire analysis on pressure vessel bolt fracture
• Analysis on brazed joint break failure
• Analysis on sealing failure and fretting fatigue behavior of fittings induced by pipeline vibration
• Fatigue strength modelling of high-performing welded joints
• Investigation on Fatigue reliability of large monopiles for offshore wind turbines
• Fatigue crack growth in railway axle
• Review on fatigue of offshore structures
• Failure analysis of fiber-reinforced composite laminates using finite element method
• Crack growth of biomedical polymer-ceramic interpenetrating scaffolds composite
• Investigation on ductile fracture of high strength pipeline steels

• Determine origin(s) of fracture.
• Understand mechanism(s) of fracture.
• Discover root cause(s) of premature fracture.
• Determine fatigue crack propagation rate/speed.
• Explore strngthening mechanism(s) of fatigue resistance.
• Research on new method(s) to improve fatigue resistance.
• Evaluate (test) on fatigue strength of materials under different conditions.
• Recommend counter measures and solutions to prevent recurrence of fatigue and fracture failures.
• Support litigation/court hearing on liabilities related to failures and accidents.

Click here to understand more about what is effective failure analysis and accident investigation.

Our experts had successfully accomplished thousands of failure analysis & accident investigation and contract R & D projects, some typical cases are listed as follows:


• Research on surface strengthening on rotating bending fatigue limits of structural materials
• Development of high strength anchorage systems to hold wire ropes for building and bridges
• Failure analysis on crevice corrosion and fatigue of roller coaster vehicle spindle
• Forensic investigation on rail fatigue of mass rapid transport system/ subway
• Failure analysis on aircraft engine turbine blade fatigue
• Failure analysis of wire rope fatigue of lift
• Investigation on propeller bolt (fractured by corrosion fatigue) of hovercraft accident
• Forensic investigation of corrosion fatigue of crane wire rope
• Failure analysis on marine engine connecting rod and bolt fatigue
• Research on shot peening on torsion fatigue etc.

According to the project requirements, following techniques are available for assessment and failure analysis on fatigue & fracture projects:


• Scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
• Energy Dispersive X-Ray spectrometry (EDX)
• Sectional Metallography
• Tensile/compression test
• Fatigue test
• Charpy impact test
• X-ray diffraction (XRD)
• X-ray photonelectron spectrometry (XPS)
• Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR)
• Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)
• Thermaogravimetry analysis (TGA)
• Ultrasonic Testing (UT)
• Radiographic Testing (RT)
• Liquid/dye Penetration Test (LT)

brittle fracture

ductile fracture

low cycle fatigue

high cycle fatigue

corrosion fatigue

thermal fatigue

liquid metal brittleness

stress corrosion cracking

tempering brittleness

impurity grain boundary brittleness

etc.