This short course will explore opportunities and limitations of forensic failure investigation of automotive light bulbs. The on or off status of an automotive lamp prior to a collision can often be sited as a direct cause of the incident, but how can the status of the lamp be determined, particularly if it was damaged in the impact?

Who should attend and why?

The course has been designed and developed in conjunction with the Road Traffic Incident Investigators of the UK constabulary and is therefore ideally suited to police force road traffic incident investigators. Other professionals working in the field will also be welcome.

Overview of the course

The course will examine the various types of light bulb commonly found in automotives, including basic incandescent lamps, halogen lamps and high intensity discharge (HID) lamps. We will explore the relationship between manufacturing, operation and failure modes of these types of lamp.

Where appropriate, we will examine the basic metallurgy of the components which will aid us in an understanding of the forensic investigation.

We will investigate:

• a range of different failure modes of tungsten elements including ductile and brittle failures, high temperature deformation, thermal and mechanical fatigue, oxidation, normal aging, mechanical and thermal shock failures.
• how to assess the on-off status of short cycle vehicle lamps such as indicators and brake lights
• problems with assessing HID lamps

The course will be a combination of lectures, tutorials and practical work, including a basic introduction to optical and electron microscopy.