`Arizona pipeline stacker bracket failure`

Worked example of ductile-vs-brittle visual diagnosis. Arizona, ~2015. Big forklift lifting fifty tons of pipeline pipe; the holding container failed; millions of dollars damage. From photos alone Tom saw the steel had bent before breaking — ductile, therefore overload failure. "I didn't even have to go see it."

I remember as a sophomore, Professor Backofen said the longer you think about a tensile test, the less you understand it. The tensile test is a very complex test. Brittle fractures show little or no distortion, they occur in the elastic regime. Ductile failure occurs in the plastic regime. One of the first things I do when I go look at a fracture — sometimes I only look at a photo someone sends me — I'm looking to see if there's any stretch to the metal. Out in Arizona, a year ago, some guys had some big forklift machine lifting pipes for a pipeline. The thing that was holding all these pipes — they were lifting up fifty tons of pipe — and the container on the forklift broke, did a lot of damage, millions of dollars of damage. Someone said, well, why did it fail? I looked at the photos, and the steel bent before it broke. So the steel is ductile. I knew right there it was an overload failure. I didn't even have to go see it. I sent someone else to go look at it.