Plastic products fail or crack unexpectedly during service. The cause of failure can be pinpointed through a detailed failure analysis. A careful examination of the failed part and fracture surfaces is usually the first step in any failure analysis. Fracture surface morphology reveals the fracture origin and mechanism responsible for crack initiation and propagation. Physical conditions of the part provide valuable information about the material properties, manufacturing process, and in service environments. In many cases, additional tests and analyses may be performed to confirm or narrow down the possible failure mechanisms. These may include measurement of molecular weight of the plastic for possible material degradation, residual stresses in the part, and a stress analysis. This talk will provide a general overview of techniques used to accomplish failure analysis, and prevention of failure of polymeric parts. It will also provide insight to the technician/engineer/chemist who infrequently encounters failure analysis in their job. Several general and specific examples will be discussed.

Dr. Shabeer consults in the areas of plastic failure analysis, material selection, product design evaluation, and characterization of polymers, elastomers, and polymer composites. His areas of specific expertise are in polymer failure mechanisms and structure property relationship in polymeric material. Dr. Shabeer manages projects involving a broad range of products, such as: automotive parts, plumbing, medical devices, aerospace composites and other consumer products. In additional Dr.Shabeer also has expertise in polymer degradation mechanisms, polymer rheology, product development, service life studies, process evaluation from part analysis and comparison of physical property results with application requirements.

Dr. Shabeer received his Ph.D from Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly known as University of Missouri-Rolla) in 2005. He also received the Gold Medal from the Indian Plastics Institute for the best candidate in polymer engineering in 2001. He has worked on over 20 failure analysis cases. He was actively involved in technical investigations and failure analyses that required the use of many laboratory analysis techniques, including optical microscopy, fractography, electron microscopy, non-destructive, and destructive evaluation and chemical analysis.

Dr. Shabeer has authored many technical papers on polymer failure analysis and bio based composites.