Cast iron component failure: A metallurgical investigation

A fractured nutcracker was examined for determining the root cause/s for premature fracture/failure. This is one of the common tools used typically for cracking hard nuts. In this study, metallurgical failure analysis techniques namely, visual inspection, optical microscopy, SEM, and hardness tests were used in investigating the broken product. From the metallurgical analysis, it was determined that the combined effect of low carbon equivalent and presence of inclusions contributed to the sudden fracture of the nut cracking tool.