Dive into a broad range of topics essential to understanding and preventing plastic failure. The most efficient and effective approach to plastic component failure is performing a systematic failure analysis following scientific method. Someone once said, “If you don’t know how something broke, you can’t fix it,” highlighting the importance of a thorough understanding of how and why a product has failed.
This course can be applied to the following certificate:
Plastics Technology Certificate
Benefits and Learning Outcomes
- Name the essentials of why plastic components fail
- Describe the five factors affecting plastic part performance
- Identify the process of conducting a failure investigation
- Recognize the importance of ductile-to-brittle transitions and their role in plastic component failure
- Assess how and why a product has failed
- Evaluate approaches to more quickly respond to and resolve plastic component failure
- Demonstrate methods and techniques to avoid future failures
Course Outline/Topics
- Introduction to Plastics
- Overview of Plastics
- Composition
- Properties
- Plastic Part Failure
- Failure Correction and Prevention
- Part Design
- Mold Design
- Material Selection
- Processing
- Validation Testing
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- Failure of Plastics Overview
- Failure Mechanisms
- The Roles of Multiple Factor Concurrency and Statistical Distribution in Plastic Part Failure
- Failure Analysis
- Problem Solving / Investigation Techniques – FA and RCA
- Failure Analysis Test Methods
- Case Studies
Who Should Attend
Engineers, scientists, technicians and managers who design, fabricate and manufacture plastic components.
Instructors
Antoine Rios, Sr. Managing Engineer, Principal, has been with The Madison Group since 1999. Dr. Rios received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Plastics Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. His work concentrates in the analysis of plastics failure,… read more
Javier C. Cruz is a Senior Managing Engineer at The Madison Group where he is actively involved in failure analysis and design verification of thermoplastic, composite, and elastomeric parts. He also leads research investigations related to analysis and testing techniques… read more
Jeffrey A. Jansen is Senior Managing Engineer and a Partner. Jeff specializes in failure analysis, material identification and selection, and aging studies for thermoplastic materials, and has been solving polymer-related problems for 23 years. In that time, he has performed… read more
Erik Foltz is a certified professional Moldflow® consultant at The Madison Group. Foltz received his MS from the Polymer Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Foltz’s work concentrates on assisting industrial clients accelerate the product design process through the… read more