Engineering failures necessary for success (Engineering Colleges Tamil Nadu) the dailynews

Failure. Engineers seek to avoid it.

Engineering Colleges Tamil NaduIn “To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure,” Henry Petroski explores the roles of failure in engineering. He shows how failure drives engineering.

Best Engineering Colleges“To Forgive Design” contains some of the expected elements associated with a book on engineering failure. It does contain examination of spectacular engineering failures, such as bridge collapses and the space shuttle disasters. Yet what made reading it unexpectedly rewarding is Petroski’s explorations of positive uses of failure.When is engineering failure a good thing? Some things are designed to fail. When you want crackers in a bite-sized serving you break them. The scoring in a cracker allows you to break it into an expected size. It is a planned failure mode — something used every day by engineers. You can see it in everything from energy absorbing guardrails, crumple space in automobiles and tearaway panels intended to protect a larger structure from collapse by allowing controlled failure of a component.Other chapters explore concepts of the mechanics of failure, which allows predictable failure, and the problem of fatigue and how to deal with it. He also examines unexpected failure. He revisits famous engineering failures, such as the 1847 collapse of the Dee Bridge, to see what fresh lesson can be drawn from them.Petroski also shows the role that failure plays in furthering engineering. Bridges can be designed so they never fall, automobiles designed to never crash, electronics to never fail, but this would require compromises yielding unsatisfactory results. Some rivers could never be spanned because it would require going beyond existing knowledge (risking failure). Cars that traveled no faster than walking speed could prevent dangerous crashes but would be undesirable. Making failure-proof electronics might drive prices to where a device cannot be afforded. Petroski shows how over-engineering yields a form of engineering failure, such as a spectacular bridge collapse.He also investigates the ethics of engineering. He looks at the role that organizations, such as The Order of the Engineer, play in fostering responsibility among engineers. Engineering — despite the inherent risks — remains one of today’s most respected professions. Petroski explains why.