Teaching good practices in Failure Analysis to students to help them react efficiently to damage in their professional career.

During their professional career, many engineers will be faced with the failure of metallic components and the need to evaluate the causes to prevent its recurrence. As failure analysis is a particularly delicate science, it requires that future engineers be trained in this field so that they can have the "correct reactions". As the process of failure analysis is complex, it draws upon many different technical disciplines such as observation, inspection, and laboratory techniques to determine the physical causes of problems or failures. The engineers must keep an open mind while examining and analysing the failure to achieve a clear and objective determination of the origin of the rupture. To prepare our students, we offer them the opportunity to carry out a real-life industrial assessment of a metallic part that has undergone a rupture.

During this presentation, we present the pedagogical approach followed during the 5 1/2 day project during which the students will be confronted with all the important steps surrounding the failure analysis, from the submission of the quote for the undergoing tests to the evaluation of the global context of the failure which aims at gathering as much relevant information as possible surrounding the studied case.