Online Program

Defect Initiation, Growth, and Failure: A General Statistical Model and Data Analyses (302729)

Keywords: models, defect initiation, growth, failure

This talk describes a simple and versatile new model for defect initiation and growth leading to specimen failure. The model and data analyses apply to fatigue crack growth in metals, ceramics, and plastics; to dendrites in circuits; to tumors in patients; and to other defect initiation and growth applications. This model readily yields the distribution of time to failure (when a specified defect size is reached) and the distribution of time to defect initiation. The model can be readily fitted to data where each specimen's defect size is observed only once using commercial software for fitting regression models to censored data. The model and fitting methods are illustrated with applications to dendrite growth on circuit boards and the growth of blisters in automotive paint.