
Failures during product testing and use are a fact of life. Even with the most robust design we can develop an overly aggressive reliability test or find users that dish out punishing treatment, causing product failures. And for designs that are less robust, standard reliability tests and normal users will cause failures, occasionally or frequently depending on the design robustness.
When a product fails, its related to failure of individual components and/or joints between components. When a component or joint fails, it’s because their materials degraded to the point that the component or joint could no longer perform as required.
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