Talk:structural failure

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structural failure

SoP, failure of structure. Definition contradicts Wikipedia too. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:54, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Delete probably. Definition seems to be encyclopaedic (at least in how it avoids saying "failure of structure"). Equinox ◑ 23:20, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

The definition is probably just plain wrong. It seems to say that the structure may have cracks or deformations but might not actually fail. Seems to be copied from Wikipedia:

"Structural failure is initiated when the material is stressed to its strength limit, thus causing fracture or excessive deformations."

But then changed. So IMO it's just plain wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:59, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Sum of parts, bad definition. Delete SemperBlotto 08:17, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I did make it because we had a long discussion on the Danish wikipedia about the exact meaning of the word here and there is an article on the English wikipedia about it and it is not just sum of the two word but a specific technical term and the definition is from the article on wikipedia so I dont believe that there is anything wrong with it. I am sorry if have have changed the meaning when trying to sound more like a dictionary entry. Hope someone can fix it or maybe I can come up with at better definition. Keep Kinamand 12:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I have now expanede the definition. Btw the reason that I did not at first include load-carrying in the definition is because in Star Trek it is also used about a spaceship which is about to fall apart because it is under attach. Kinamand 12:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

That way madness lies. A wordy definition will soon become virtually impossible to attest. Does your definition encompass "structural failure" of the economic/banking/financial system? "Structural failure" can refer any complex, usually man-made, physical, social or other structure from a nano-structure or a crystal to an artificial planet. Including "cause" in a definitin is not appropriate for a dictionary unless the causality is essentially unquestioned in the word-usage community for which the definition is intended.

IOW, IMHO, not only is the definition wordy, wrong, and inappropriate for a dictionary, but incorporating this type of cause is wrong-headed. DCDuring TALK 13:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep the term per the reason of semantic sum-of-partness being suspect; I say nothing of the current definition. I do not understand what structural failure refers to. Some quotations showing varied uses of the term, given without links and identification of the source:

• "While inspecting a home, Broker Nono finds cracks in the walls and foundation (structural failure)."
• "When there's a catastrophic structural failure, such as a wing falling off, it understandably attracts attention from the industry, ..."
• "A torsion test was developed for studying the structural failure of selected raw fruits and vegetables."
• "Many workers have shown that patients with structural failure of the bone have less bone than persons without structural failure."

--Dan Polansky 13:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: Dan Polansky's comment, I refute all of this. Simply a matter of a different sort of structure in each case. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

You reject all of this rather than refuting it. In order to refute something, you have to argue. This you have not done. I had no idea what structural failure is and to what variety of objects it refers to. I admit of tending to be inclusionist and voting keep in RFD, so there can be some sort of bias on my part, but I can only honestly say that I do not know what "structural failure" refers to. I surely did not suspect that "cracks in the walls and foundation" come under the head of "structural failure". I do not know what "failure of structure of selected raw fruits" refers to. --Dan Polansky 13:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Nor do I without context. What we forget a lot is that when people meet words, they meet them in a context, whereas we define them out of context. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing really for me to refute. You say you don't understand, I don't refute that. The fact that you don't understand the term does not make it includable without any other supporting evidence. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:38, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

here here is the definition from webster a fracturing or giving way under stress. Can we use it somehow? Kinamand 14:29, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

If we keep it, I would prefer the definition to be something like:- A condition in which a system or structure can no longer withstand an imposed stress without deforming or breaking. SemperBlotto 14:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It does seem to suggest that structural failure can occur without the structure actually failing. Which IMO would be an RFV issue. I wonder what sort of citations we could even accept for that. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

If you look again at my quotations, you will find one attesting that a structural failure does not necessarily imply actual breaking down of the structure:

• "While inspecting a home, Broker Nono finds cracks in the walls and foundation (structural failure)."[1]

In the same source just after the quotation, you'll find a person has to inspect a building to find a structural failure. A structural failure is not simply a collapse of a building. (Buildings are not the only sort of things exposed to structural failure.) The definition proposed by SemperBlotto seems like a good start. --Dan Polansky 15:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

If we can't even decide what it means then I'm inclined to keep even if it is sum-of-parts. And per some of the quotations above, I don't think it is. Or rather, I'm more confused about how it's actually used than what I thought it means. DAVilla 12:51, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

There is great disagreement about the meaning of expanding universe, which I'm fairly sure we could replicate in this forum. Does that mean we should have an entry for it? DCDuring TALK 13:36, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. That's a maybe to expanding universe, but not for that reason, rather as a technical term. I'd still keep this one per prior knowledge. Does it also pass the lemming test? OneLook doesn't seem to suggest it does. DAVilla 09:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

In ordinary speech and much technical usage a structural failure could be either a result (eg, "a structural failure of undetermined/unknown") or a cause.

It will be interesting to see whether citations can be found for one of our typically wordy encyclopedic definitions. As a working hypothesis: encyclopedic definition => hard to cite and/or narrow context. DCDuring TALK 16:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

About the reference to load-carrying capacity: Please note that any structure is actually carrying some load - at least the load of itself (this is the reason that bridge-spans cannot simply have infinite length). Wings of an aircraft is carrying the load of the aircraft, a dam is carrying the load of the water behind it (well, and a spaceship for instance is carrying the load of pressure from the air inside).

About the term in general. I was (and am) reluctant to add this specific term to wiktionary, but I must insist that it is a specific term with a specific meaning in construction engineering (and related areas). The original discussion on the danish wiki came from me identifying an error in a translation of a wiki-artcile about 9/11, and a related error in an english-danish dictionary. My claims are simply (1) failure is not simply a synonym for error, those two words cannot be interchanged freely and (2) "structural failure" does not imply that the failing structure was constructed in an incorrect way. It may also have put to greater stress than it was designed to withstand. --93.162.75.98 21:50, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It may well be that there is a specific engineering sense with substantial agreement among different authorities. We would like to get citations showing agreement on a specific "idiomatic" definition of the term. I note that none of the references at onelook.com except Wikipedia define structural failure. This included legal dictionaries and technical glossaries. DCDuring TALK 23:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

As I have written before: webster defines it as fracturing or giving way under stress but it does not show up on one look because it does not have a separate entry because it is in the entry about failure. Kinamand 06:49, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Right. It is only in a usage example in the entry for failure. Thus, as for almost all collocations, the dictionary-based procedure for determining the meaning of "structural failure" is to look up "structural" and "failure" and determine how the author most likely intended that they combine. (If that doesn't work, one can, with Internet or library access, find many instances of "structural failure" in context. With Internet access one can find a context very similar to that of the usage in question.) What one finds is that the term is used to mean various things, sometimes made explicit by the author, sometimes only to be guessed at. One explicit definition follows:

From the PoV of a dictionary, I think, this looks like structural + failure. DCDuring TALK 12:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The in Denmark famous dictionary Gyldendals røde ordbøger have the following translation of structural failure: konstruktionsfejl, bygningsfejl which means construction error and building error. A Dansh person had read this definition and read the article September 11 attacks on wikipedia and translated this sentence in the article Three buildings in the World Trade Center Complex collapsed due to structural failure on the day of the attack into Danish where it did mean that the buildings did collapse because they had error in construction. We did discus on the Danish wikipedia if the translation is wrong and what would be the correct translation. We have written to Gyldendals røde ordbøger but it will take weeks for them to respond and perhaps correct the online version. Since it is important that other people don't make the same translation error could we not keep the entry here in wiktionary about it despite the fact that the meaning most likely just is sum of parts or not have general meaning but depends on context? Kinamand 08:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The implication that there was an error in design is not inherently part of the meaning of the phrase in English. I have read this very point in a few of the google books hits for "structural failure". The definition of the word "failure" could have prevented the error by the dictionary. It looks as if the dictionary entry author was fooled by a "false friend". DCDuring TALK 14:02, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

kept. -- Prince Kassad 09:21, 19 March 2011 (UTC)