Handbook of Lessons Learned: From Fifty Years of Failure Experience in Engineering Design, Manufacturing, and Construction

In the second in a series of FESI Publishing Monographs, the distinguished US mechanical engineer Dr Bill O’Donnell provides readers with lessons learned over a 50-year career—lessons suitable for new entries to the structural integrity field and those who are engaged in structural integrity assessment across a range of industries.

In Dr O’Donnell’s words:

“The technical literature for mechanical designers, engineers, manufacturers, and constructors is surprisingly void of lessons learned from operating experience and actual mechanical and structural failures. Considering that the best source of understanding mechanical failures are actual failures, the latter are needed to formulate fundamental failure mechanisms and to provide the criteria needed to prevent such failures.

“The academic community does not have ready access to technical details of mechanical and structural failures, and therefore cannot use its valuable lessons learned to develop the needed failure criteria and limits for design. The result is a void in the technology used in textbooks to prevent mechanical failures in equipment and structures.

“This Handbook only fills this void in a basic way by providing very practical lessons learned. While these lessons will prevent most repetitions of similar past failure modes, further development of the stress, strain, fatigue, fracture, buckling and creep rupture failure limits based on actual failures is needed.”