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The Pavement Tells the Story: Reading Evidence from a Motorcycle Crash
March 3, 2021 11:45 am Leave a Comment
What can be determined from a motorcycle’s skid mark and the roadway evidence it left behind? The obvious, that the motorcycle crashed; but what more? From a recent case, starting with the pre-impact skid mark, a lot was determined about the driver’s (and passenger’s) input into the crash. A single skid mark started at the beginning of the collision location, a common piece of evidence at a motorcycle crash. Taking that mark and analyzing it, several things were determined. (more…)
Heat Exchanger Failures Will Shut Your Process Down
February 26, 2021 11:11 am Leave a Comment
Heat exchangers, as the name implies, are used to bring a process stream to a desired temperature. They can heat or cool either gases or liquids. They are fairly intricate in their construction, therefore not the cheapest piece of equipment to purchase. For that reason, facilities don’t keep “spare” exchangers lying around, so when they fail catastrophically, the entire manufacturing process goes down with them… and stays down until they are fixed or replaced. Ow!

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Proper Construction and Maintenance Can Prevent Deadly Chimney Fires
February 16, 2021 1:52 pm Leave a Comment

There are few things as comforting to me during the winter months as a warm fire burning in the fireplace. And in this case, I am talking the real deal, the kind that warms you multiple times; from cutting, splitting and stacking the firewood until finally lighting a fire in the fireplace. However, just like your parents taught you, fire can be dangerous. And having an actual fire in your home fireplace comes with some required maintenance to ensure you can safely control the fire and keep it where it belongs. (more…)
Stress Corrosion Cracking of Stainless Steel in Marine Environments
January 29, 2021 3:37 pm Leave a Comment
Stress corrosion cracking involves the slow growth of small, often microscopic, cracks through a metal part in a corrosive environment. The cracking can continue to the point that the part fails suddenly and unexpectedly even though it still appears new and in good condition.

My first experience with stress corrosion cracking happened in the Charleston harbor when the stainless steel rudder suddenly separated from a sailboat during moderate winds. What had been a pleasant evening sail turned instantly into being in a difficult to control boat in the middle of the busy shipping channel. The rudder remained attached only (more…)
Residential Structure Fires
January 25, 2021 2:05 pm Leave a Comment
The winter season is well underway in the United States, with the Christmas and New Years holidays behind us and the depths of cold weather here for the duration. With winter, many people spend more hours indoors as compared to the summer when outdoor activities ramp up. With more time spent indoors, it is somewhat intuitive that the use of electricity would increase as well.

Electricity is one of the most influential utilities in our daily life. Much of what modern societies rely on to get through a normal day requires electricity. Have you ever been in a slight panic looking for an electric outlet when your cell phone is below 10% charge? Or how many times do we all attempt to turn on a light switch when we enter a room during a known power outage from sheer habit? Even our personal transportation which has relied on gasoline for roughly 100 years is shifting toward electric automobiles. (more…)
Heating System Losses, Part One
January 18, 2021 9:36 am Leave a Comment
When fall and winter arrive and temperatures drop, it is a great comfort to have a heating system to warm your home or office. Several categories of heating equipment exist to provide both primary and secondary heating. Primary heating systems include fuel gas/fuel oil/electric forced air furnaces, heat pumps, hydronic heating/steam systems and even wood-fired heating systems. Secondary heating equipment includes electric, gas and kerosene space heaters of both fixed and portable design, and fireplaces. Each of the different types of heating systems have unique hazards that, uncontrolled, can result in fires, explosions, burn injuries, and carbon monoxide poisoning. (more…)
Staying Connected on the Loop: Two by Two’s Mobile Internet Setup
November 19, 2020 7:52 am Leave a Comment
After completing the sit-stand workstation in the guest stateroom of our 47’ Nova Scotia pilothouse trawler, Two by Two, that I reported in a previous blog, I found I needed an internet connection with reasonable speed and reliability. While almost every marina will give you a password for their WiFi, the quality of most marina connections is unreliable and too slow to effectively work as a forensic engineering consultant. When I tried to download a simple photograph through any type of remote connection to the Irmo, SC office, I could go make a cup of coffee and come back before the download finished. To upload a group of photographs (more…)
P&ID’s, If You Please – Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams Explained
November 17, 2020 4:26 pm Leave a Comment
When investigating an industrial incident, one piece of information I always ask for is the relevant P&ID’s for the process. P&ID stands for Piping and Instrumentation Diagram and is defined as “A schematic diagram of the relationship between instruments, controllers, piping, and system equipment.” A set of P&ID’s for an entire facility allows you to trace the entire manufacturing process from raw material unloading to finished product loadout, including utilities like steam, water, fuel, and air. That’s great information to have, but isn’t especially useful (more…)
The Role of Interlocking Guards in Injury Prevention
November 16, 2020 2:48 pm Leave a Comment
In the three-part series on the CE mark, we scratched the surface of some of the requirements an equipment manufacturer must meet in order to earn this designation. Part three of the series dealt with some of the requirements for the design of a guard. One of the items for consideration with the design of a guard is the frequency that someone will need to access the area protected by the guard. If access is needed on a routine basis, often defined as more than once per shift, the guard needs to be designed to be movable instead of fixed. Movable is defined as able to be opened without the use of tools. Otherwise the frustration and time requirements of obtaining tools and removing a fixed guard will often lead to the guard being discarded. (more…)
The Paths of Chemical Exposure
October 6, 2020 9:51 am Leave a Comment
The Safety Hierarchy states that hazards should be mitigated first by engineering controls, secondly by guarding, and lastly by warning/training. When the first two, engineering controls and guards, fail in a manufacturing setting, a chemical release could occur. A forensic chemical engineer can help determine the root cause of that failure. (more…)

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