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Catastrophic failure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Catastrophic failure is a sudden and total systems failure which cannot be recovered from. The affected system not only experiences destruction beyond any reasonable possibility of repair, but also frequently causes injury, death, or significant damage to other, often unrelated systems. As such, catastrophic failures often lead to cascading systems failure.
The term is most commonly used for structural failures, but has often been extended to many other disciplines where total and irrecoverable loss occurs. Such failures are investigated using the methods of forensic engineering, which aims to isolate the cause or causes of failure.
Examples of catastrophc failure of engineered structures include:
- The Tay Rail Bridge disaster of 1879
- The Tacoma Narrows Bridge of 1940
- The Hyatt Regency walkway collapse of 1981
- The Space Shuttle Challenger of 1986 and Space Shuttle Columbia of 2003
- The Banqiao Dam failure of 1975 and other dam failures
The term catastrophic failure is occasionally used in computer software to indicate an unexpected error from which the system cannot meaningfully recover.
