Failure Analysis

Every unresolved material failure poses system-wide risks, including warranty headaches, costly recalls, and potential safety incidents. To mitigate these risks, consult an expert at Covalent to integrate failure analysis and quality control into your product development lifecycle from the outset instead of waiting for failures to manifest in the field.

Our diverse failure analysis and quality control services will help you to:

• Zero in on defects before they escalate.
• Boost product reliability across life cycles.
• Integrate engineering failure analysis into your QA workflows.
• Ensure industry and regulatory compliance.

Partner with Covalent to safeguard your product integrity, so you can relax and focus on scaling what matters: reputation, performance, and bottom line.

Timely intervention is the key to preventing repeated failures or damage. You should consider consulting our failure analysis lab when:

• A material fails unexpectedly during operation.
• Cracking, corrosion, or fatigue surfaces on your metals or polymers.
• Significant performance drop under environmental or mechanical stress.
• Defective material detected during internal QA or returned under warranty.

Whether it’s metal failure analysis or polymer-specific investigations, early diagnostics make all the difference.

• Mechanical and Fracture Analysis: Focuses on identifying cracking modes by examining fracture surfaces & deformation patterns. Techniques like SEM & profilometry are usually used for analysis.
• Corrosion and Environmental Analysis: Evaluates how chemical or environmental exposure altered the material surface or microstructure. Investigations use microscopy & surface chemistry tools to understand degradation pathways.
• Manufacturing Defect Analysis: Aims to locate inclusions, voids, porosity, or poor interfaces that originate from production processes. Cross-sectional imaging & compositional methods are used to trace the defect & understand its impact on performance.
• Chemical and Molecular Degradation Analysis: Examines changes in molecular structure due to oxidation, hydrolysis, UV exposure, or reaction. Spectroscopic techniques such as FTIR, Raman, or XPS help determine the process.
• Thermal and Processing Analysis: Evaluates how temperature cycles, overheating, or residual stress affect the material. Methods like DSC, TGA, XRD stress analysis, & microstructure imaging reveal thermal damage.
• Electrical and Electronic Analysis: Focuses on identifying damage mechanisms such as ESD, electromigration, & dielectric breakdown by inspecting conductive paths & insulating layers. High-resolution imaging, FIB cross-sections, & electrical characterization help map the progression of electrically driven degradation.
• Contamination Analysis: Identifies foreign particles, films, or unexpected elements that interfere with mechanical, electrical, or chemical performance. Surface & bulk techniques like EDS, XPS, FTIR, ICP-MS are used for investigation.

It is important to know when to consult for a failure test to avoid downtime and ensure reliability.

Covalent can support your quality assurance programs by integrating our failure analysis laboratory data into your QA cycle to identify red flags early.

• Define the problem and understand the context through client discussion:
  • Background review: service conditions, design specs, and history of the issue.
  • Understand your process, capture failure timeline and symptoms.
  • Define and validate scope, urgency, and success criteria.
• Hypothesize potential failure mechanisms and present an action plan.
• Gather evidence:
  • Collect failed parts, reference samples, and related documentation.
  • Ensure proper chain of custody for sensitive or legal cases.
  • Document condition through photos, measurements, and baseline tests.
• Collect data and perform additional analysis as needed:
  • Apply the most suitable analytical tools (SEM, EDS, FTIR, X-ray, etc.).
  • Simulate operating conditions if needed.
  • Compare with baseline or reference materials.
• Comprehensively analyze all the information gathered:
  • Correlate lab data with real-world usage and known failure mechanisms.
  • Identify root caluse and contributing factors.
  • Validate through repeat testing or cross-method confirmation.
• Report findings and validate the hypotheses.
• Recommend Solutions/ Corrective actions.