Lecture 2

Question 1

1. What is a suitable definition of forensic engineering when taken in the context of this module

Answer 1

Forensic engineering is the study of design failures due to poor design, poor construction and deterioration of material

Question 2

Why could it take years (even decades) for you to obtain the expertise to practice as a professional forensic engineer? Would you have to work differently for a client who employed you as a forensic engineering either to find the root causes of an accident and how to minimise the risk of reoccurrence in the future or as an expert witness in a legal case?

Answer 2

• It takes years of training, experience and education to obtain the knowledge.
• Need to understand fundamental principles of all disciplines of engineering.
• Need experience in a magnitude of skills from design, construction, inspection, legal complications, good communication skills.
• To be a forensic engineering will need to be charted, active in learned societies, fair impartial and ethical.
• Clients will hire forensic engineering to find out why structures have failed. This might take years to understand the root cause. And once the cause is found this can then be developed into help similar structures into making regulations

Question 3

In addition to technical expertise, what other attributes are needed of a professional forensic engineer

Answer 3

• Good communication skills to be able to work in a team. This skill will be helpful when investigating pedestrians who have witnessed a failure. The skill is beneficial to be able to communicate different ideas and reasons. Also working part of a team will come with being take other ideas in board and to understand them also.
• Being able to problem solve. Forensic engineering is understanding problems and breaking into sub-sections to get a greater detail of what went wrong. It involves thinking out-side the box as the answer will not be straight forward

Question 4

3. In the context of the material taught what is a suitable definition for failure, and what are the two main classifications for structures? With which of these two classifications are the case studies presented in the module more often concerned, and why is this so

Answer 4

• Failure is when a product is no longer able to perform its purpose.
• Structural failure is the case of a collapse, explosion or fire where safety is at risk
• Functional failure is the failure of a product to work as intended, with damage largely being economic in nature.
• In the module the failure that is present more is structural failure

Question 5

4. What five principal reasons can be a root cause to a structural failure and give an appropriate case study example associated with each of the principal reasons

Answer 5

• Poor design : the I-35 w bridge collapse
• Not constructing the product of the design
• Human intervention (poor maintenance)
• Deterioration of material properties over the products life
• Climate loads , accidental loads, dynamic loads