1. ECE 3000: Engineering Seminar
Engineering Failures

2. 1) Toyota Recalls (2009)
9/6/2016
Issue: Pedals trapped/stuck causing unintended acceleration or braking issues.
Impact:
~20.5m vehicles recalled

3. 2) Hall of Shame: Samsung
9/6/2016

4. 2) Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 are on Fire! (2016)
9/6/2016
Samsung’s version of the story:
Battery had manufacturing defect – electrodes were prone to bending. > Causing short circuit and fire.
Recalled > Had 2 battery manufacturers- switched to only one> New batteries prone to welding defect causing positive and negative electrodes to short at welding point.
Second recall !! > Note 7 off market.
Impact:
$5.3 billion cost to Samsung!
96 battery overheating reports (per US Consumer Product Safety Commision)
Per Samsung:
13 report of Burns.
47 reports of property damage.

5. 2) Burnt Note7 - Video
9/6/2016

6. 9/6/2016
3) Takata Airbags (2004?/2008 – 2017) 2019??
May shoot metal fragments, upon/during inflation!
Impact:
Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, BMW, GM, Subaru, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, Ferrari, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Audi, Jaguar, Tesla.
~42 million vehicles affected in US
Honda: 11 deaths & 184 injuries in US
Interesting:
Only 12% of recalled cars repaired in America, vs 70% recalled repaired in Japan (huge difference in the no. of cars?)
Orbital testing results: “it was the combination of these three factors—the use of ammonium nitrate, the construction of Takata’s inflator assembly, and the exposure to heat and humidity—that made the inflators vulnerable to rupture.”
Cause:
Improper storage of propellant causes increased pressure
Humidity? Rust?
Welding issue?
DPM - High passing rate?

7. 9/6/2016
4) VW TDI Fiasco
Promise: clean Diesel, Failure: 40x times NOx emissions!
Impact:
Public health and enviorment
Law enforcement and EPA
Bad publicity and failure for approval of future vehicles
Cause:
Activated ECU controls during testing to mask their true NOx emissions
In real-world driving, ECU controls were off
Corporate greed
Software realignment
Defeat device

8. More engineering disasters
9/6/2016
Most Famous
Architectural Failures
EE/ECE related Failures
Learning from Failures (Technical issues)

9. Share your thoughts on what was the cause of the failure.
Assignment
9/6/2016
Please do a case study on an engineering failure that was reported in the past 5 years.
Summarize the event (what happened), what was the impact (on both customer and engineer/organization side) and how the organization responded to it (fix?).
Share your thoughts on what was the cause of the failure.
What can be learnt from this failure and how can it be avoided in the future?

10. References
9/6/2016