Dean Jacobson, PH.D., Forensic Engineer

Dr. Jacobson is Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Arizona State University. He attained the status of Full Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, as well as Chemical, Bio and Materials Science Engineering. Dr. Jacobson taught Mechanical and Materials Engineering courses including basic materials science involving metals, plastics, ceramics, semiconductors and composites. Other courses included mechanical metallurgy, physical metallurgy, failure analysis, corrosions, physics and other courses. He taught design in many courses as well as the senior capstone design course which he was in charge of developing for several years.

Dr. Jacobson has published 134 papers in scientific and engineering proceedings and journals. He has consulted in engineering design, failure analysis and testing of structures and materials for entities such as United States Air Force, Department of Energy, NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Naval Research Lab, General Atomics, Xerox Electro-Optical Systems, Loral, AFOSR and various commercial enterprises.

At the M.S. level Dr. Jacobson worked for Bendix in the brake division designing polymer-metal components materials for vehicles and aircraft. At the Ph.D. level, he worked for Aerojet General in the rocket engine area developing bimetal technology for liquid metals. He also worked at Xerox Electro Optical systems in the aerospace area developing lasers, night vision devices, heat pipes, high intensity arc lamps, thermionic energy conversion (the conversion of heat to direct current electricity) and worked on Xerox Copier developments. The projects which he worked on as an engineer, faculty member and consultant have involved design, failure analysis, fabrication, mechanical, thermal and chemical testing and product development. The hundreds of forensic engineering cases have largely involved those areas attributed to his formal education, but infinitely extended by the learning process during the many years of teaching, research and consulting.

Dr. Jacobson has an extensive background in conducting forensic cases involving structural failures, automobile and truck rollover and collisions, accidents, vehicular component failures including but not limited to brakes, engines, suspensions, axles, wheels and body structures. Other areas include electrical malfunctions, fires, propane and gas explosions, corrosions failures, furniture failures, playground equipment failures, farm equipment failures, ladder failures, slip, trip and fall events and numerous other product design and manufacturing defects.