Engineering Failures - Report Ideas

[tec5c]

As part of my EE degree I need to write a short report on an engineering failure. I've had a look around the web but I couldn't really find too much for electronic failures. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for something that I could write about. The report is 4 pages max. so it doesn't need to be too extensive.

[pickle9000]

rigol 832

[AndyC_772]

The iPhone 4(?) antenna issues? (Google "you're holding it wrong" and go from there)

How about Toyota's recent enormous fine for having a *possible* firmware bug in an ECU?

Dreamliner battery fires?

[wraper]

1. Capacitor plague. Huge amount of motherboards and monitors failed (not limited to): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
2. Nvidia huge fail when their chips (produced over approx 1.5 years) massively died. Especially in notebooks and xbox 360: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004378/why-nvidia-chips-defective
3. Recent Toyota ECU fail.
4. Huge monitor failure rate of samsung 305T 30 inch monitors (most of them failed over 1-2 years). Also all other manufacturer monitors produced on the same LCD panel. Similar problem to Nvidia but with Altera FPGA.
5. Multiple lithium battery recalls from many manufacturers.

[johnwa]

Yes, it is a bit hard to think of interesting ones. I did this exercise once in a mixed discipline class - it was easy to think of things with a mechanical/civil engineering theme (titanic/hindenburg/comet/chernobyl etc), but not so much electronics. I ended up doing the 1998 Auckland power crisis, but even that is more power engineering really.

If you don't mind a more software engineering/project management slant, there are plenty of cautionary tales - e.g. the Therac 25, or the Denver Airport baggage handling system. Or possibly you might be able to study something like a railway accident caused by a signalling system failure. (There is a site somewhere with an archive of reports into railway accidents, though its URL escapes me at present.)

[SeanB]

Sony capacitors in consumer electronic entertainment products.

[Bored@Work]

Obamacare

As already mentioned, the Denver International baggage handling system, a classic

The German Berlin-Brandenburg Airport smoke exhaust system - will surpass Denver on the classic clusterf*ck scale

Windows Vista

The Ariane 5 explosion

The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion

The faulty Ford cruise control buttons, caused by some switch from Texas Instruments catching fire

The Apple graphic chips issue

All the issues of the various gaming consoles. Ring of death, etc.

Edit: And of course, in western Europe the heap of shit known as the Vattenfall company. Every nuclear power plant they manage to get their hands on had at least one near miss.

[PA0PBZ]

Although not purely electronic the mars climate orbiter faillure is a real classic. 

[Tris20]

How about the recent missing flight? Not so much failures but possible future technological improvements which could have prevented the current incident and future occurrences?

Failing that I think the Iphone antenna is a good shout.

[krish2487]

Well dont forget the Dreamliner fiasco!!!

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Not sure about the Toyota one, I heard they couldn't reproduce the fault, wasn't that more a legal failure.

Vista, idk my wifes been running it for years, it's been ok.


What about the Korad PSU failure. There is a lot of easily info on this forum. I think it is videos #314 and #404

Or the Fluke gsm failure. Thats one more of Dave's vids.

[jeremy]

BGA ball cracking due to thermal cycling aka red ring of death (xbox 360) aka yellow light of death (ps3).

Intel Pentium FDIV bug.

Windows ME 

[wraper]

BGA ball cracking due to thermal cycling aka red ring of death (xbox 360) aka yellow light of death (ps3).

Intel Pentium FDIV bug.

Windows ME 

Yeah, ball cracking  . Damn all those reballers. Whole business made around screwing the customers. Actual BGA ball cracking is a comparably rare condition. The real fault is in the microscopic balls between crystal and chip substrate. Heating just fixes that for some weeks-months until the problem appears again. But customer is already separated from his money by that time. Also full ebay of reheated faulty chips.

[128er]

Loose connectors on Apple iMac 27 inch / LG  displays due to thermal issues.

http://gerrysweeney.com/apple-imac-27-dark-side-screen-failure-the-manufacturing-fault-apple-will-not-admit/

[nuhamind2]

failure in intel chipset that affect sata port,don't remember which chip.

[Fank1]

Add Windows 8, you will be ahead of the curve.

[pallisi]

Nikon D600, dust problems. Nikon admitted it after one and a half year.

[jeremy]

BGA ball cracking due to thermal cycling aka red ring of death (xbox 360) aka yellow light of death (ps3).

Intel Pentium FDIV bug.

Windows ME 

Yeah, ball cracking  . Damn all those reballers. Whole business made around screwing the customers. Actual BGA ball cracking is a comparably rare condition. The real fault is in the microscopic balls between crystal and chip substrate. Heating just fixes that for some weeks-months until the problem appears again. But customer is already separated from his money by that time. Also full ebay of reheated faulty chips.

I'm interested, could you please elaborate? I was under the impression that it was usually due to fractures in the balls either going open circuit or causing impedance mismatch on high speed lines.

Thanks!

[NiHaoMike]

Yeah, ball cracking  . Damn all those reballers. Whole business made around screwing the customers. Actual BGA ball cracking is a comparably rare condition. The real fault is in the microscopic balls between crystal and chip substrate. Heating just fixes that for some weeks-months until the problem appears again. But customer is already separated from his money by that time. Also full ebay of reheated faulty chips.

I'm interested, could you please elaborate? I was under the impression that it was usually due to fractures in the balls either going open circuit or causing impedance mismatch on high speed lines.

Thanks!

I have encountered two motherboards (out of the several dozen I have lying around) with cracked BGA connections due to the board flexing. The root cause in both cases was the CPU heatsink backplate not being rigid enough or missing altogether. I could actually get one board to work if I flex it just right. (They're both too old to be worth anything nowadays, but I might try reflowing one with a heat gun just to see if it works.) Another cause is a "smart" fan that works by cycling on and off, which is just right to thermal cycle the solder joints every few minutes.

For another subject, you also might want to read up on the infamous WRT54G V5. In short, in one revision (pretty much all corner cutting), they turned what was one of the best routers in its day into one of the worst.

[Smokey]

Look up the history of RoHS.  There were TONS of problems with the RoHS process when it first rolled out (and are still traps today if you don't know about them).  There is a reason there is a medical exemption and things implanted in your body can have lead but your cell phone can't.

Tin Whiskers
Melting plastic parts (not rated for the higher reflow temp)
Delaminating PCBs
Brittle solder joints cracking (like BGA balls)
etc...

Actually Tin Whiskers by itself would be a super easy topic to write 4 pages about.

[N2IXK]

Therac-25 (Trusting software to implement safety-critical interlock functions without hardware backup)

Genesis sample return probe (G-switches installed backward and not caught by multiple layers of QA)

Apollo 1 fire (frayed wiring, in hazardous environment)

Apollo 11 near-abort (improper checklist procedure leads to overloaded computer)

Apollo 13 explosion (poor documentation, poor communication, lack of contractor accountability, improper procedures used all lead to improper component installed and latent hazard created)

Apollo 14 near-abort (suspected loose debris in switch)

[TheBorg]

failure in intel chipset that affect sata port,don't remember which chip.

MCP79. I have one and it's a pain in the butt to find a SSD for... 


iMac G5 capacitor failures.

[GiskardReventlov]

I'd rank the ones where the most lives are at stake to be most worthy of writing about.

There were some tragic medical xray equipment overdosages.

The already mentioned dreamliner battery.

There was an airliner that had serious elevator control problems that caused one to invert and crash into the sea with all souls on board lost. I think it was due to a binding worm gear issue.

US train wrecks that could have been avoided if our train system wasn't antiquated and a joke of the world.
(Japan's got a train that does 500Kph or so!)

Bridge failures. Classic Tacoma Narrows (name??)

The fly-by-wire, issue if I recall correctly, in the san fran. airliner crash.

There was that strange cruise ship wreck in the mediterranean sea, possible steer-by-wire issue or navigation control issue or other "issue".

There's always some stage or set of bleechers failing.

[Skimask]

My own engineering failure...just happened not 5 minutes ago.
Working on a PCB I designed.  Got the board loaded with passives, no IC's or anything expensive yet.  Decide probe power/ground rails, looking for the obvious dead short.  Had one (of course).  Spent a couple hours looking for the mistake.  Couldn't find it.
Decided to throw a couple amps at it and blow the short out.  Sure as shit.  An SMT electrolytic cap blew itself off and ended up.....somewhere....in the shop.  I heard it hit the floor somewhere to my right, maybe 10ft away or so.
Looked at the pads where the cap WAS mounted.  Again, sure as shit, too much solder paste under that cap.

I laughed.
I cried.
I soldered another cap in place and went about my business.

[wraper]

I'm interested, could you please elaborate? I was under the impression that it was usually due to fractures in the balls either going open circuit or causing impedance mismatch on high speed lines.
Thanks!

This fault occurred mostly in Nvidia notebook chipsets and GPUs made in 2006-2008 (Not limited to Nvidia and notebooks though). Especially on models with weaker cooling. After multiple thermal cycles microscopic balls connecting crystal and substrate cracked. Iirc the reason is that thermal expansion of the materials was not matched well. There was a problem with underfill compound as well they skimped on some protection layer on the bottom of the chip die. Fault itself looks like this: