The Need

Manufacturers of advanced products such as nuclear fuels, specialty chemicals, energy materials, and semiconductor coatings increasingly rely on complex processes where chemical reactions and physical system behavior are tightly coupled. Existing system-level failure analysis tools are effective at evaluating mechanical, electrical, and software faults, but often fail to capture chemistry-driven deviations that can significantly impact product quality, process reliability, and safety. As a result, critical failure pathways may remain undetected until late-stage development, increasing cost, risk, and time to deployment.

The Technology

OSU engineers have developed Integrated System Failure Analysis with Chemical Techniques (IS-FACT), a modeling and diagnostic framework that extends traditional system failure analysis by incorporating chemical process behavior into system-level evaluations. IS-FACT enables engineers to assess how chemical reactions interact with equipment, controls, and process conditions during the conceptual design phase. By capturing the dynamic relationship between chemical and physical subsystems, the platform identifies potential failure mechanisms, predicts fault propagation, and supports earlier design decisions to improve system reliability, safety, and operational robustness.

Commercial Applications

• Advanced nuclear fuel manufacturing and qualification processes
• Chemical process plant design, safety analysis, and optimization
• Semiconductor, thin-film, and coating production systems
• Digital engineering, process simulation, and reliability software platforms

Benefits/Advantages

• Identifies chemistry-driven failure mechanisms that conventional system analyses may overlook
• Enables earlier safety and reliability assessment during conceptual system design
• Improves fault diagnosability by modeling interactions between chemical and physical processes
• Supports risk-informed design decisions, reducing development costs and potential operational failures