> FIND OUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
When a component fails, a product causes injury, or an engineering dispute reaches litigation, you need engineers who can determine what actually happened, and explain it clearly to a technical tribunal or court.
Elemeca provides independent failure investigation, root cause analysis, and expert witness opinions for legal proceedings, insurance claims, product liability disputes, and accident investigations.
Our founding engineers have direct experience with failure analysis in aerospace and defence programmes — environments where the consequences of getting the cause wrong are severe and the investigative discipline is correspondingly rigorous.
Independent Engineering Investigation and Expert Opinion
Failure Investigation Methodology
We follow structured investigation frameworks to ensure findings are defensible, reproducible, and traceable, to achieve a reliable accident reconstruction. A typical investigation involves:
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Structured evidence collection: components are photographed, measured, and catalogued before any destructive examination begins, with a clear record of receipt condition and all examination steps
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Visual and physical examination of failed components: fracture surface analysis, deformation characterisation, and wear pattern mapping
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Material assessment: hardness testing, dimensional inspection, and review of material certifications and traceability records
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Load and stress reconstruction: back-calculating the forces and conditions that produced the observed failure mode
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Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Fault tree analysis (FTA) and failure mode mapping: systematic consideration of all credible failure initiators before converging on a root cause
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Finite element analysis to validate or challenge proposed failure mechanisms where analytical substantiation is required
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Comparison against applicable design standards, material specifications, maintenance records, and operating history
We investigate both physical failure modes and the operational or human factors that contributed to them, including:
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Fatigue fracture and wear, high and low cycle, fretting fatigue, abrasion, erosive mechanisms
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Corrosion: general, galvanic, stress corrosion cracking, and corrosion-fatigue
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Overload fracture: ductile, brittle, and impact-driven failure
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Thermal damage: creep, oxidation, and thermally-induced cracking
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Manufacturing defects: material, process, and dimensional non-conformance
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Joint failures: fasteners, bonded joints, and welds
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Incorrect operation and misuse: maintenance errors, installation faults, and operation outside design envelope
Failure Modes and Causes We Investigate
Expert Witness and Reporting
Where investigations proceed to litigation or formal dispute resolution, we provide structured expert witness reports. Our reports clearly distinguish between established facts, technical inferences, and opinion, and are written to be understood by non-specialist readers, including judges, barristers, and insurers, without losing technical rigour.
We can provide:
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Expert witness reports: independent opinion on cause and mechanism of failure
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Joint statements: agreed position documents where multiple expert witnesses are involved
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Technical rebuttal: review and challenge of opposing expert reports
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Court and tribunal attendance: oral evidence and cross-examination support