failure analysis

Process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability

Entityfield of studyQ1022240

Instance of: field of study
Subclass of: analysis
, risk assessment
Part of: risk analysis

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability. According to Bloch and Geitner, ”machinery failures reveal a reaction chain of cause and effect… usually a deficiency commonly referred to as the symptom…”. Failure analysis can save money, lives, and resources if done correctly and acted upon. It is an important discipline in many branches of manufacturing industry, such as the electronics industry, where it is a vital tool used in the development of new products and for the improvement of existing products. The failure analysis process relies on collecting failed components for subsequent examination of the cause or causes of failure using a wide array of methods, especially microscopy and spectroscopy. Nondestructive testing (NDT) methods are valuable because the failed products are unaffected by analysis, so inspection sometimes starts using these methods.

Overview

All data

15 statements · 13% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Is the study of: breakdown
Uses: root cause analysis
Facet of: reliability

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9 identifiers linking failure analysis across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

13%

externally sourced

Source last edited July 10, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). failure analysis (Q1022240). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/failure-analysis-Q1022240