Editor’s choice
WHERE FAILURE FUELS INNOVATION
Throughout history, our ability to master motion has defined human progress. Even today, motion remains at the core of modern industry. The electric motors and drives that control it are the unsung heroes, powering everything from production lines to offshore platforms and critical infrastructure. When they perform flawlessly, operations run smoothly. When they fail unexpectedly, the consequences can be severe. Mika Kiviniemi, project manager at ABB’s Quality and Reliability Laboratory in Helsinki, explains how the company’s fusion of data analytics and physics-based reliability testing is helping industries predict and prevent failures before they occur.
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BB’s approach to reliability testing is among the most rigorous and sophisticated in the world. Our state- of-the-art 6,000 square metre testing facilities in Helsinki, Finland, bear witness to this, representing one of the most advanced environments dedicated to understanding and improving the durability of drives and motors. Backed by more than €100 million in investment and decades of collective expertise, Our approach at ABB’s combines sophisticated testing capabilities with a deeply integrated global supply chain. This commitment stems from a simple but powerful philosophy: a drive is only as strong as its most vulnerable component. Every innovation, every test, and each improvement ties back to that guiding principle.
In the modern industrial world, it is easy to overlook the technology that keeps everything in motion. Motors and drives rarely attract attention until an unexpected fault brings operations to a halt. Consider the potential impact of a motor failure in a hospital, aboard a research vessel, or on a space platform. Although such dramatic scenarios are rare, they illustrate the immense responsibility these components bear in keeping the world moving safely and efficiently.
SIMULATING THE REAL WORLD When drives and motors leave the safe, sterile factory environment, they enter a world full of challenges, including fluctuating temperatures, vibration, corrosion, electrical transients, and mechanical wear. Predicting exactly how they will respond to all those stressors is, in theory, nearly impossible.
At ABB, we turn that uncertainty into a learning opportunity. By recreating realworld stresses under controlled laboratory conditions, our engineers accelerate years of wear and unpredictable operation into just weeks or months. This action allows us to observe how and why components fail, well before those issues
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could ever affect a customer’s application. The most valuable insights often come when a product fails, but that is also the hardest moment to capture because there is not much time for proper investigation. We recreate those moments in the lab, allowing our engineers to study and understand failures safely and repeatedly.
WHERE FAILURE FUELS INNOVATION The Helsinki facility is committed to mastering what we call the physics of failure – the process of understanding precisely how and why equipment reaches its limits. The facility is purposebuilt to push products far beyond their normal operating conditions, revealing exactly where and how breakdowns occur.
To hasten material fatigue and analyse component performance under varying loads, the laboratory conducts a wide range of electrical, mechanical, and environmental stress tests.
Electrical overstress testing assesses insulation strength, voltage tolerance, and semiconductor behaviour under extreme peak loads.
Mechanical testing employs vibration rigs, shock tables, and thermal cycling chambers to compress years of operational wear and stress into a short timeframe.
Environmental simulators subject components to extreme heat, cold, humidity, corrosive gases, and salt mists, that mimic challenging coastal or marine environments.
Every test is equipped with extensive instrumentation to measure performance at each stage. The resulting data is analysed in depth, feeding directly back into ABB’s design and manufacturing processes. This closed feedback loop ensures that every insight from the lab becomes a step toward
more durable, efficient, and reliable products, turning controlled chaos into continuous innovation.
LESSONS HIDDEN IN FAILURE Many breakthroughs at the lab begin with intentional failure. When a drive or component finally reaches its limit under testing, engineers conduct detailed forensic-style analyses to uncover exactly why it happened. By examining every detail – from material fatigue and solder joint wear to design geometry and unexpected environmental stress – they can determine the root cause of each failure. These investigations become a powerful
January 2026 Instrumentation Monthly
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