Engineering forensics at Youngstown State University

Buildings collapse, vehicles crash, cranes and bridges collapse. Why? Who is responsible? Forensic engineers must analyze failures to determine causes, origins, and legal responsibilities of accidents, fires, and explosions. This is the subject of a new course offered in spring 2005 at Youngstown State University (YSU) entitled Engineering Forensics Using the Scanning Electron Microscope. The course included a lab in which undergraduate students conducted failure analysis investigations involving the use of the scanning electron microscope and the energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer. The creation of this course was a collaborative effort between the Forensic Science and the Materials Engineering Programs at YSU. This paper describes how this course was forged from a combination of the principles of forensic science with engineering failure analysis techniques.