Components fail for one of four reasons: abuse, improper design, improper material selection, improper processing. The abuse could be accidental, negligent, or intentional. Usually two reasons can be quickly eliminated, which helps to limit and define the hypotheses to test and thus properly answer the failure question. A metallurgical/materials engineer and a mechanical engineer together are a strong team to assess mode of failure. Possible causes of failure seem limitless, but are typically over-stress, excessive brittleness, corrosion, stress corrosion cracking (SCC), fatigue, design error, material quality, cold temperatures, hot temperatures, quality of water contacting the material, etc.
Determining cause of failure is routinely used in insurance matters, accident investigation, losses, and other liabilities, in the interest of assessing product liability, the cause of personal injury, the potential for subrogation by the insurance carrier. Sometimes, a nagging problem in industry can be solved with failure analysis, resulting in improved processing rates or product quality.