Brad A. James

Biography

 Dr. James specializes in failure analysis, failure prevention, and integrity assessment of engineering structures and components. His specific expertise includes metallurgy, materials science, fracture, fatigue, material degradation, corrosion, life prediction, and design. In his many years of engineering experience, Dr. James has conducted hundreds of failure analysis investigations on widely varying engineering structures, ranging from miniscule medical devices to power-plant components. Dr. James also helps clients from various industries prevent failures, assess the integrity of their designs or equipment, as well as interact with governmental agencies. Dr. James has special interest in fractography, fracture mechanics, wear, corrosion, embrittlement phenomena, microstructural development, heat treatment, material selection, and welding and joining. The common thread in each of Dr. James’ investigations is the application of metallurgical, materials science, and engineering mechanics fundamentals to help understand and solve complex problems. Dr. James has taught several graduate-level fracture mechanics and failure analysis courses at Stanford and Santa Clara Universities. He has also taught several courses for The American Society for Materials (ASM International) involving failure analysis, design, and life prediction/validation of medical devices, and has been a Visiting Lecturer at San Jose State University. Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. James was employed as a Research Engineer, Materials Performance Division, at the Babcock and Wilcox R&D Center.

Research Interest

 Materials & Corrosion Engineering