Glass Expert Performs Sauce Bottle Glass Failure Analysis

Glass expert peformed a bottle failure analysis on a broken bottle of steak sauce . Intitally it was stated that this was a new and unopened bottle; however, examination revealed that there was sauce on the bottle threads. In addition, the "band" below the plastic lid was not connected. From this it was concluded that the bottle had been opened in the past. The fracture surface was examined and the root cause failure analysis showed the origin to be located on the bottle "shoulder ring" which is just below the plastic lid band. Upper left is a photomicrograph of the a portion of the fracture surface that includes the origin (indicated by the arrow). Upper right is a higher power photomicrograph using Nomarski optics of the failure origin. In this case the failure originated at the site of chipping damage to the bottle (arrows indicate the initial crack direction). This is not a manufacturing defect.