Inertial dampener

An , or inertial damper, was a technology that enabled manned starships to achieve the the rates of acceleration required to reach relativistic or warp speeds within a reasonable amount of time.

Mechanism
The inertial dampener was an application of technology that applied a precise gravity field in the opposite direction of the acceleration forces experienced, thereby partially or fully counteracting the g-forces.

Aboard combat starships it was a common practice to set the dampeners to allow some acceleration forces to leak through on the bridge or battle bridge as a tactile aid to the conn officer on duty.

Inertial dampener failure
In the event that the inertial dampeners were to fail for even an instant aboard a ship accelerating at a high rate of delta-v, any form of organic life aboard would be instantly reduced to a thick paste with roughly the consistency of salsa, coating the interior of the ship. The effects on non-organic lifeforms such as was not known. Such failures had little to no effect on the structure of the ship itself.