© 2007 Stork Metallurgical Consultants, Inc.
The purpose of this paper is to describe fractography
by E. Philip Dahlberg
About the Author
E. Philip Dahlberg is Senior Metallurgical Consultant in the
Houston office of Failure Analysis Associates, 3637 West Alabama, Suite
145, Houston, Texas 77027. He has spent 20 years in the field of
mechanical metallurgy, specializing in applications of electron microscopy to
failure analysis. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida and
undergraduate degrees from Northwestern University and Shimer College in
Illinois. He is licensed as a Professional Engineer in Texas, Washington,
and Illinois.
Introduction
No self-respecting criminologist will leave the scene of a
crime without a careful inspection for fingerprints. Their discovery
and subsequent identification will often lead the investigator to the
culprit and to a solution of the crime. Similarly, the detailed
markings on a fracture surface, the fractureprint, so to speak, will
often provide the forensic metallurgist or failure analyst with
important clues as to why a structure failed.
Engineering alloys used for structural applications are in
general complex, multi-component, multi-phase aggregates of
metal grains, non-metallic inclusions, impurities and voids. The
alloys have a fabrication or cast texture and microscopic
deformation structure. They contain local variations in chemistry,
electronic potential, and residual stress. When a metal fractures, a
crack traverses this complex structure separating it into two or
more parts. The crack interacts with the microstructural elements
in specific ways which depend on the stress, strain, strain rate,
temperature, and environmental conditions which existed at the
time of failure, and therefore, it adopts a unique surface
topography.
The process of examination and analysis of the fracture
surface topography is called fractography. (1) Fractography can be
carried out at several levels; visually with the unaided eye, at low
magnification using an optical microscope, or at high
magnification with a scanning or transmission electron microscope
(SEM or TEM). By carefully comparing the macroscopic and
microscopic details of the fracture surface with those of well
documented "pedigreed" fractures generated under known
laboratory conditions, the reasons for service failures can often be
identified and proper corrective measures instituted to insure that
replacement of the failed parts will not result in additional
problems or catastrophe.
techniques as used in routine failure analysis and present selected
examples of particular fracture prints as observed on service
failures using the scanning electron microscope.
Failure Analysis Techniques
The failure of an engineering structure is always a
surprise. Structures are designed and built to stay together, and the
aim of failure analysis is to eliminate the unexpected by making
known those factors which combined to cause the fracture. This
requires the use of a wide variety of tools and techniques.(2,3,4)
While it is often of critical importance, the analysis of surface
topography using fractographic techniques is one part of failure
analysis and its use must be integrated with the other tools and
procedures available to the failure analyst.(5,6) Proper failure
analysis combines the results of fractography with a thorough
understanding of the part's design, fabrication, service history,
chemical composition and microstructure, and mechanical
properties under the specific stress and environmental conditions
existing at the time of failure. Often the analytical work must
include complex exemplar tests to verify proposed failure
mechanisms.
Fracture of an engineering structure occurs when the sum
of the stresses exceed design limits, fracture usually occurs after
general yielding and plastic instability. More typically, however,
brittle catastrophic failures occur at nominal stresses below design
limits and are associated with the presence of an initiating defect,
flaw, or crack. When the local stresses at the edge of such a defect
exceed the fracture toughness of the material, unstable fracture
occurs.
The initiating defect can be a material flaw such as a large
non-metallic inclusion, a fabrication flaw such as a heat treat crack,
a casting defect, weld porosity, or a machining mark. Similarly, it
can be a crack which has initiated and grown to critical size by
mechanical mechanisms such as fatigue, or by chemical means like
corrosion.
In the typical component failure there are two distinct
regions on the fracture surface. One is the initiating defect or stable
crack and the other the unstable fast fracture. It is imperative,
therefore, that a careful macro-examination of the entire available
fracture surface be carried out in order to locate these two areas.
The initiating defect, the fast fracture, and the transition between
the two all can contain clues or fractureprints which will aid in
understanding the failure. High magnification photographs of these
areas are important to accurate failure analysis.

Microfractography
Once the analyst identifies the appropriate area for high
magnification microfractography, he must prepare the sample for
the electron microscope. This may involve plastic-carbon replica
preparation when a transmission microscope is used or sectioning
when small samples are view directly in a scanning electron
microscope. (7) The fracture surface as it is received from the
field is often coated with dirt, debris, and after-the-fact corrosion
products and may require cleaning before the true fractureprint can
be revealed in the microscope. Several techniques are available to
clean fractures but care must be taken in cleaning to avoid
destroying the fine detail of the original failure topograpny. (8,9)
To illustrate different failure modes and their relation to
specific fracture conditions, the high magnification appearance of
ductile, transgranular brittle, intergranular, and fatigue failures as
they appear in a single engineering alloy type are presented. The
alloy type is the 300 series anstenitic stainless steel which has a
basic composition of 18% chromium, 8% nickel, and the balance
iron.
Ductile Fracture in 304 Stainless Steel from an automotive pollution control catalytic converter. 1000x
© 2007 Stork Metallurgical Consultants, Inc.
Ductile Fracture
Figure 1 shows the fracture surface from a stainless steel
automotive catalytic converter. The failure occurred by overstress.
The microtopography is characterized by numerous concave
dimples. The dimples are halves of microvoids which develop
very near the advancing crack front as the metal is being strained.
With increasing deformation, the voids coalesce to form the
fracture plane. The dimples can nucleate and grow around non-
metallic inclusions such as the sulfides, carbides, and silicates and
so their size and distribution can be related to alloy chemistry.
Duplex void sizes are evident as large voids form at early stages of
plasticity around the biggest particles and are subsequently
interconnected by fine voids forming around a second set of
inclusions. Different orientations and voice symmetry can be
related to the direction of strain development. The shape and
orientation of the voids can be useful in determining the direction
of crack propagation. Voids near the oblique edge of shear failures
in sheet material become elongated and their apex points towards
the failure origin. (10)

Transgranular Brittle Fracture
The most easily recognizable transgranular fracture is
cleavage cracking observed in certain steels and other alloys of
similar structure which fracture at low temperatures. In cleavage
fractures, the crack separates the metal grains along a well defined
crystal plane, initiates at the grain edge, and requires little energy
for propagation other than that necessary for crack surface
generation. The cleavage facets are marked with river patterns
which are edges of cracks propagating on different levels in each
grain. The local direction of propagation is "up stream" following
the merging of the crack edges.
Stress-corrosion Cracking Fracture in 316 Stainless Steel
Pressure Vessel. 1000x
© 2007 Stork Metallurgical Consultants, Inc.
Transgranular fractures can also result from environmental effects
such as stress-corrosion, hydrogen embrittlement, or liquid metal
embrittlement and from low amplitude fatigue cracking. Figure 2
shows transgranular stress-corrosion cracking in a pressure vessel
constructed of 3l6 stainless steel which failed after extended
exposure to a chloride containing environment at elevated
temperatures and pressures. Figure 3 shows a portion of the crack
pattern in a metallographically prepared polished and etched cross
section. The cracks are highly branched, crossing the individual
grains in a variety of orientations rather than following the grain
boundaries.
Polished and Etched Cross Section of Chloride Stress
Corrosion Cracking in Austenitic Stainless Steel. 500X

Intergranular Corrosion Fracture in 304 Stainless
Steel Heavy Wall Tube. 500x
Intergranular Fracture
Intergranular cracking or grain boundary fracture can
occur under a variety of loading and environmental conditions
including overstress, stress-corrosion, hydrogen embrittlement,
high-temperature creep-rupture, and fatigue. It can occur with little
associated deformation or with extensive plasticity as in elevated
temperature failures. Intergranular cracking is often associated
with variations in alloy composition or impurity concentrations at
grain boundaries.
Figure 4 shows an intergranular corrosion fracture near a
circumferential weld in a thick wall tube made of 304 stainless
steel. The heat of welding causes chromium to be precipitated at
the grain boundaries near the weld. The material adjacent to the
grain boundaries becomes depleted in chromium and,
consequently, the grain boundary path is subject to corrosive attack
and cracking under the applied stress.
Fatigue Fracture
While the term fatigue fracture refers specifically to a
fracture resulting from a cyclic strain application, the
microtopography of fatigue crack surfaces are suitably
characteristic to be considered a distinct fracture mode. At suitable
strain amplitudes for relatively ductile material, the cyclic
plasticity around a crack causes the crack to grow in a series of
well defined steps. These steps appear as striations on the fracture
surface. It has been observed that each striation is associated with
a single load cycle and that the striation spacing,. can be correlated
with how fast the crack is growing. (11) Often well defined
striations are not observed over the entire fracture surface but are
localized in spots, or are fine enough to be below resolution limits
of the electron microscope. Since fatigue cracking can be affected
by the environment, as in corrosion fatigue, transgranular or inter-
© 2007 Stork Metallurgical Consultants, Inc.
Fatigue Fracture in 321 Stainless Steel Expansion Bellows.
Arrow indicates direction of crack propagation. 500x
granular cracking can often be associated with cyclic strain
fractures.
Figure 5 shows striations developed on a stainless steel
expansion bellows which cracked due to cyclic stressing. The
arrow indicates the direction of crack propagation. Each striation
corresponds to the position of the crack front as it grew
incrementally with each load cycle. Correlation between striation
spacing and growth rate parameters can often indicate the
magnitude of the applied stresses.(12)
Combinations of different fracture modes can be observed
on different areas of the same fracture, and a mixture of modes is
often encountered within the same local region. Additionally,
microfractography can reveal features such as the surface markings
of non-metallic inclusions or porosity, stress wave-crack
interactions, slip steps, and crack closure markings many of which
can either aid the analyst or cause confusion. General reference
handbooks are available which contain fractographs from a wide
variety of metal failures generated under known stress and
environmental conditions.(13,14,15,16) These sources catalog the
many different fracture features so that the analyst can associate a
particular topography with a known set of failure conditions.
Summary
Identification of the fine scale topography on a fracture surface, by
visual, optical microscopy, and high magnification electron
fractography is a critical step in the analysis of service failures. By
combining this identification with a thorough understanding of the
history of the part fabrication and in-service operational
conditions, the knowledge of the specified metal alloy and its heat
treatment, the metallographic evidence obtained from Polished and
etched sections through the fracture initiation area, chemical and
mechanical property analyses of the failed material, and expemplar
component tests, the causes of most service failures can be
determined.
 © 2007 Stork Metallurgical Consultants, Inc.

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