The Winning Line: A Forensic Engineer's Casebook - Hardcover

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ANDREW EMERY SAMUEL Professorial Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia September 14, 1934 (Ujpest) - December 3, 2007 (Melbourne) Professor Andrew Samuel, a pioneer of engineering design research, prolific author and respected educator, passed away on December 3 2007. Andrew was born in turbulent times in Hungary on September 14, 1934 to a middle class family. In 1944, as a ten year old, he demonstrated his courage and strong will by not wearing the yellow star decreed to identify all Jewish citizens. For twelve months, he lived among strangers and survived that which took the lives of so many. His mother and older brother both perished in Auschwitz. He came to Australia with his father to start a new life in 1949. Very quickly, Andrew exhibited his high intelligence, quickly gaining a lifelong mastery of the English language in addition to his earlier fluency in German and his native Hungarian. His obvious practical skills led to a trade apprenticeship with the General Motors (Holden)automotive company in Melbourne and Andrew became an expert toolmaker. However, his keen intellect and questing mind were not satisfied: he studied at night school and won a scholarship to the University of Melbourne where he graduated Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) with honours in 1959. In the 1960's, his career combined graduate research with practical experience in industry. During the five years from 1963 to 1967, Andrew held responsible design/project engineer positions at Altona Petrochemicals, Massey Ferguson and Australian Paper Manufacturers. He gained his Master's degree in 1963 in the field of Fluid Mechanics and his Ph.D. followed in 1973, studying "The Development of Turbulent Boundary Layers in Adverse Pressure Gradients." This latter thesis provided benchmark data for many later theoretical and experimental investigations. Andrew'sthesis had been passed by the examiners twelve months earlier, but he delayed acceptance of the degree until his wife, Eva, had also passed her examination and was ready to receive her Ph.D. (in chemistry). The award of Ph.D.'s to husband and wife at the same ceremony was a unique and significant event, both for the Samuel family and for the university community in Melbourne. Andrew returned to the University of Melbourne as a lecturer in 1969, and quickly entered into an ongoing and productive partnership with Dr. William (Bill) Lewis in the field of engineering design. His unique combination of talents finely honed practical and experimental skills, together with a highly developed capacity for creative, abstract thought established him as a leader in his chosen area of academic expertise. Andrew's record in teaching, research, and innovative industry/university programmes led to his promotion to senior lecturer (1974), reader (1989), and professor (2002). In the 1980's, Andrew established and, until his retirement led, an important and successful research programme in Kinematic Design and Robotics. He formed a productive academic relationship with the late Kenneth Hunt and was consistently successful in attracting high quality researchers and in attracting research funding from industry and from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the national researchfunding agency. In 1995, Andrew was awarded the degree of Doctor of Engineering by examination for his thesis titled, "Significant Publications in Engineering Design, Robot Kinematics and Engineering Education." This rare honour marked a significant achievement, as the University of Melbourne has awarded only 15 higher doctorates of this type in the past 100 years. Andrew was an active member of the Australian National Committee for the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms from the 1980s and chaired the committee between 1999 and2003. Andrew was a stalwart of the biennial International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED) . Either he or a close colleague from the Melbourne Design Gr

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Engineering litigation is rarely about who is right or who has been wronged. It is mostly about which side is able to develop and secure a winning line of argument that will, at worst, persuade a ruling body to settle the litigation in their favour or, at best, dissuade the other side from proceeding with the litigation.

Engineering litigation rarely proceeds without some doubt in the case evidence. The settlement of this doubt requires the judgment of a ruling body. The case often proceeds as a formalised litigation drama. Expert witnesses can add substance and credibility to the theatre. This book makes use of a broad range of well documented case examples to draw out the appropriate level of substance and credibility needed to win over opinion. The wide-range of casebook examples in this book are based on the author’s thirty-year experience in engineering litigation. There are examples of relatively simple technical evaluation to complex interactions of various strands of engineering systems from mechanical failure, product liability, human injury, fraud and crime to intellectual property.

The Winning Line: A Forensic Engineer's Casebook provides a unique sourcebook for expert witness and underwriters in engineering litigation of a broad-range of well-documented case examples that can be used to plan their future litigation work and to help them develop their own winning lines of arguments. Students in forensic engineering and risk engineering will find the book’s cross-disciplinary approach an ideal introduction to the subject.

Dr Andrew Samuel is Professorial Fellow (hon.) in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Melbourne. He has thirty years’ experience of work as an expert witness in engineering litigation of machinery failure, human injury and intellectual property and is lead consultant for the firm Engineering Investigations and Associates.