And it depends on the characteristics of the material. Plastic, wood, glass, cast iron, steel, cement, earth, reinforced concrete, composite materials, each of which have different failure characteristics, sometimes also depending on design loading, as many will fail differently under various types of loading conditions, type, or direction of loads etc. even the geometry of the item can also play a significant part in its failure mode, buckling, or stress concentration, fatigue, uniaxial, biaxial, or triaxial loading etc.may influence different type of failure modes. Wood loaded perpendicular to grain is a completely different material than if loaded parallel to grain.