Mr. Petroski is a civil engineer and published this book 20 years age. Most of what he deals with is civil projects, bridges, etc, where failure, when it happens is clear. Now so much of engineering is dealing with nano, genetic or macro subjects, such as nano robots for medical treatments, genetically modified crops, and engineering to deal climate change. With genetically modified crops for instance, or efforts to capture CO2, failure might not be a stand or fall question but one of the value of the hoped for effect and the externalities or unexpected consequences of the engineering. Mr. Petroski does a good job explaining that failure can take decades but with many of our challenges today, do you see another judgement of failure that is not directly an engineering question? If so, how do you as engineers approach that?
Thanks, Dan H.
Petroski talks about civil engineering because that is what he knows and because everyone is familiar with civil engineering products. Everyone has been across countless bridges and seen countless buildings.
ReplyDeleteFailure occurs in all of engineering, except that failure in other areas does not so readily entail the loss of life.
If the electric motor in your Prius fails, you get your car towed but chances are you don't die because of it. When your computer fails to boot up, you don't die, but your day will likely be ruined because of it. My first horizontal shaft washing machine saved lots of money in hot water and reduced drying time, but after a couple years resistor R301 on the control board kept overheating and burning up. It cost me $300 to have it fixed twice. I fixed it myself the third time for $100. Then I found out that this particular function was poorly designed because there was a class action lawsuit against Maytag. My 5 year old washing machine that originally cost $900 and cost another $700 for repairs never did save me money. The washing machine was a failure.