Project 03 of 09
Post-mortem Analysis of Brittle Fast-Fracture in a Skateboard
How and why a skateboard deck failed the way it did, and how to mitigate it.
- Context
- UC Berkeley · ME 224
- Role
- Failure analysis (team of four)
- Tags
- Failure analysis, Fractography, SEM
In the following report, myself and three other mechanical engineers (Richard Didham, Phillip Downey and Megan Bahn) did a postmortem analysis of a fractured skateboard deck. To keep it simple: we wanted to how and why this skateboard failed the way it did. From this analysis we provided solutions to mitigate the events that led up to failure in this particular way.
Postmortem analysis is an immensely important topic in engineering, which helps inform much smarter and safer design choices for future products.
I would like to acknowledge the fantastic support of Evan Brown (PhD, PE) and Nathan Bailey (PhD) of Exponent Failure Associates for their massive contribution of SEM images to this study. Our team had little access to better imaging equipment than simple optical microscopy, which, even at the right resolution and magnification, often fails to highlight important topological features of a fracture surface.
