Independent of the application, brittle failure of materials is always undesirable, since it usually occurs without any significant deformation and thus without warning. To avoid brittle failure it is fundamental to reliably identify the failure-relevant microstructural constituents.

The mechanisms of brittle failure and the ductile-to-brittle-transition of steels represent central research topics in several projects in the area of materials engineering at MCL. 

MCL specialises in reconstruction of the real complex loading situations through specific mechanical experiments and visualisation of the resulting load by finite element simulations. That enables the identification of microstrucural constituents most relevant to the failure behaviour, even in materials of very elaborate design.