Casting Defects and the Mechanical Design Philosophies

There are two philosophies in Mechanical Design, the safe life design and the fail safe design. The safe life design is based on concept that there must be no cracks or defects in the material. And fail safe design consider that there is a defect in material, but the component can be working safety, this is, the damage tolerance concept assumes the existence of initial flaws in the mechanical component and its philosophy is based on the acceptance that damage will propagate and an adequate system of inspection should be implemented in order to monitor the damage. This work aims to present a state of art in relation to the mechanical design of components that contain defects inherent to the casting process and present a methodology to be following in mechanical design of casting components.