Factor of safety (FoS), also known as safety factor (SF), is a term describing the structural capacity of a system beyond

the expected loads or actual loads. Essentially, how much stronger the system is than it usually needs to be for an intended load. Safety factors are often calculated using detailed analysis because comprehensive testing is impractical on many projects, such as bridges and buildings, but the structure's ability to carry load must be determined to a reasonable accuracy. Many systems are purposefully built much stronger than needed for normal usage to allow for emergency situations, unexpected loads, misuse, or degradation.

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1 Two definitions of factor of safety 2 Calculating safety factors o 2.1 Design factor and safety factor o 2.2 Margin of safety o 2.3 Reserve factor 3 Choosing design factors 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Further reading

[edit] Two definitions of factor of safety

There are two distinct uses of the factor of safety: One as a ratio of absolute strength (structural capacity) to actual applied load. This is a measure of the reliability of a particular design. The other use of FoS is a constant value imposed by law, standard, specification, contract or custom to which a structure must conform or exceed. Careful engineers refer to the first sense (a calculated value) as a factor of safety or, to be explicit, a realized factor of safety, and the second sense (a required value) as a design factor, design factor of safety or required factor of safety, but usage is inconsistent and confusing. The cause of much confusion is that reference books and standards agencies use the term factor of safety differently. Design Codes and Structural and Mechanical engineering textbooks often use the term to mean the fraction of total structural capability over that needed[1][2][3] (first sense). Many undergraduate Strength of Materials books use "Factor of Safety" as a constant value intended to be a minimum target for design[4][5][6] (second sense).

[edit] Calculating safety factors

There are several ways to compare the factor of safety for structures. All the different calculations fundamentally measure the same thing, how much extra load beyond what is intended a structure will actually take (or be required to withstand). The difference between the methods is the way in which the values are calculated and compared. Safety factor values can be thought of as a standardized way for comparing strength and reliability between systems. There is a near universal push towards conservatism in the calculation of safety factors, i.e. in the absence of highly accurate data, using the worst case configuration possible to make sure the system is adequate (to err on the side of caution).[citation needed]

[edit] Design factor and safety factor

The difference between the safety factor and design factor (design safety factor) is as follows: The safety factor is how much the designed part actually will be able to withstand. The design factor is what the item is required to be able to withstand. The design factor is defined for an application (generally provided in advance and often set by regulatory code or policy) and is not an actual calculation, the safety factor is a ratio of maximum strength to intended load for the actual item that was designed. This may sound similar, but consider this: Say a beam in a structure is required to have a design factor of 3. The engineer chose a beam that will be able to withstand 10 times the load. The design factor is still 3, because it is the requirement that must be met, the beam just happens to exceed the requirement and its safety factor is 10. The safety factor should always meet or exceed the required design factor or the design is not adequate. Meeting the required design factor exactly implies that the design meets the minimum allowable strength. A high safety factor well over the required design factor sometimes implies "overengineering" which can result in excessive weight and/or cost. In colloquial use the term, "required safety factor" is functionally equivalent to the design factor. For ductile materials (e.g. most metals), it is often required that the factor of safety be checked against both yield and ultimate strengths. The yield calculation will determine the safety factor until the part starts to plastically deform. The ultimate calculation will determine the safety factor until failure. On brittle materials these values are often so close as to be indistinguishable, so is it usually acceptable to only calculate the ultimate safety factor. The use of a factor of safety does not imply that an item, structure, or design is "safe". Many quality assurance, engineering design, manufacturing, installation, and end-use factors may influence whether or not something is safe in any particular situation.

Design load being the maximum load the part should ever see in service.

[edit] Margin of safety

Many government agencies and industries (such as aerospace) require the use of a margin of safety (MoS or M.S.) to describe the ratio of the strength of the structure to the requirements. There are two separate definitions for the margin of safety so care is needed to determine which is being used for a given application. One usage of M.S. is as a measure of capacity like FoS. The other usage of M.S. is as a measure of satisfying design requirements (requirement verification). Margin of safety can be conceptualized (along with the reserve factor explained below) to represent how much of the structure's total capacity is held "in reserve" during loading. M.S. as a measure of structural capacity: This definition of margin of safety commonly seen in textbooks[7][8] basically says that if the part is loaded to the maximum load it should ever see in service, how many more loads of the same force can it withstand before failing. In effect, this is a measure of excess capacity. If the margin is 0, the part will not take any additional load before it fails, if it is negative the part will fail before reaching its design load in service. If the margin is 1, it can withstand one additional load of equal force to the maximum load it was designed to support (i.e. twice the design load).

Margin of Safety = Factor of Safety 1 M.S. as a measure of requirement verification: Many agencies such as NASA[9] and AIAA[10] define the margin of safety including the design factor, in other words, the margin of safety is calculated after applying the design factor. In the case of a margin of 0, the part is at exactly the required strength (the safety factor would equal the design factor). If there is a part with a required design factor of 3 and a margin of 1, the part would have a safety factor of 6 (capable of supporting two loads equal to its design factor of 3, supporting six times the design load before failure). A margin of 0 would mean the part would pass with a safety factor of 3. If the margin is less than 0 in this definition, although the part will not necessarily fail, the design requirement has not been met. A convenience of this usage is that for all applications, a margin of 0 or higher is passing, one does not need to know application details or compare against requirements, just glancing at the margin calculation tells whether the design passes or not.

Design Safety Factor = [Provided as requirement]

For a successful design, the realized Safety Factor must always equal or exceed the required Safety Factor (Design Factor) so the Margin of Safety is greater than or equal to zero. The Margin of Safety is sometimes, but infrequently, used as a percentage, i.e., a 0.50 M.S is

equivalent to a 50% M.S. When a design satisfies this test it is said to have a "positive margin," and, conversely, a negative margin when it does not.

[edit] Reserve factor

A measure of strength frequently used in Europe is the Reserve Factor (RF). With the strength and applied loads expressed in the same units, the Reserve Factor is defined as: RF = Proof Strength / Proof Load RF = Ultimate Strength / Ultimate Load The applied loads have any factors, including factors of safety applied.

[edit] Choosing design factors

Appropriate design factors are based on several considerations, such as the accuracy of predictions on the imposed loads, strength, wear estimates, and the environmental effects to which the product will be exposed in service; the consequences of engineering failure; and the cost of over-engineering the component to achieve that factor of safety. For example, components whose failure could result in substantial financial loss, serious injury, or death may use a safety factor of four or higher (often ten). Non-critical components generally might have a design factor of two. Risk analysis, failure mode and effects analysis, and other tools are commonly used. Design factors for specific applications are often mandated by law, policy, or industry standards. Buildings commonly use a factor of safety of 2.0 for each structural member. The value for buildings is relatively low because the loads are well understood and most structures are redundant. Pressure vessels use 3.5 to 4.0, automobiles use 3.0, and aircraft and spacecraft use 1.2 to 3.0 depending on the application and materials. Ductile, metallic materials tend to use the lower value while brittle materials use the higher values. The field of aerospace engineering uses generally lower design factors because the costs associated with structural weight are high (e.g. an aircraft with an overall safety factor of 5 would probably be too heavy to get off the ground). This low design factor is why aerospace parts and materials are subject to very stringent quality control and strict preventative maintenance schedules to help ensure reliability. The usually applied Safety Factor is 1.5, but for pressurized fuselage it is 2.0, and for main landing gear structures it is often 1.25. In aerospace, there are additional requirements. Before and up to Limit Load, the structure may not have failed nor have permanent deformation. In excess of this, plastic deformation is allowed, but failure is not. Reaching the Ultimate Load (usually the Limit Load multiplied by the Safety Factor), the structure is allowed to fail. Civilian aircraft structures are required to meet both Limit Load and Ultimate Load criteria. For loading that is cyclical, repetitive, or fluctuating, it is important to consider the possibility of metal fatigue when choosing factor of safety. A cyclic load well below a material's yield strength can cause failure if it is repeated enough.

Factors of Safety Posted on Dec 16, 2008 03:24:41 PM | Wayne Hale | 12 Comments | Old joke: You see the glass as half empty, I see the glass as half full, but an engineer sees the same glass and says it is overdesigned for the amount of fluid it holds. When an engineer starts out to build something, one of the first questions to be answered is how much load must it carry in normal service? The next question is similar: hom much load must it carry at maximum? An engineer can study those questions deeply or very superficially, but having a credible answer is a vital step in at the start of a design process. Here is an example. If you design and build a step ladder which just barely holds your weight without breaking, what will happens after the holidays when your weight may be somewhat more than it was before you eat Aunt Martha's Christmas dinner? You really dont want to throw out your stepladder in January and build a new one do you? Obviously you would should build a stepladder that can hold just a little bit more. Don't forget what might happen if you loan your stepladder to your coach-potato neighbor who weighs a lot more than you do? Can you say lawsuit? So how do you determine what your stepladder should hold? Do you find out who is the heaviest person in the world and make sure it will hold that person? Probably not. Better, pick a reasonable number that covers, say, 95% of all folks, design the ladder to that limit and put a safety sticker on the side listing the weight limit. Yep, that is how most things are constructed. But that is not all. Once you determine normal or even the maximum load it is a wise and good practice to include a factor of safety. That means that you build your stepladder stronger than it needs to be. This helps with the idiots that dont read the safety sticker; it also helps protect for some wear and tear, and it also can protect if the actual construction of your stepladder falls somewhat short of what you intended. So you might build your stepladder with a FS of 2. That would cover 95% of all folks with plenty of margin for foolish people that try to accompany their friend climbing the ladder; or when your ladder has been in service for 25 years (like mine), or when your carpenter buddy builds the stepladder with 1/4 screws rather than screws like you told him to. Factors of safety are not pre-ordained. They have been developed over the years through experience and unfortunately through failures. Some factors of safety are codified in law, some are determined by professional societies and their publications, and some are simply by guess and by golly. Engineering is not always as precise as laypeople think. Its a dry passage but Id like to quote from one of my old college textbooks on this subject (Fundamentals of Mechanical Design, 3rd Edition, Dr. Richard M. Phelan, McGraw-Hill, NY, 1970, pp 145-7): . . . the choice of an appropriate factor of safety is one of the most important

decisions the designer must make. Since the penalty for choosing too small a factor of safety is obvious, the tendency is to make sure that the design is safe by using an arbitrarily large value and overdesigning the part. (Using an extralarge factor of safety to avoid more exacting calculations or developmental testing might well be considered a case of underdesigning rather than overdesigning. ) In many instances, where only one or very few parts are to be made, overdesigning may well prove to be the most economical as well as the safest solution. For large-scale production, however, the increased material and manufacturing costs associated with overdesigned parts result in a favorable competitive position for the manufacturer who can design and build machines that are sufficiently strong but not too strong. As will be evident, the cost involved in the design, research, and development necessary to give the lightest possible machine will be too great in most situations to justify the selection of a low factor of safety. An exception is in the aerospace industry, where the necessity for the lightest possible construction justifies the extra expense. "Some general considerations in choosing a factor of safety are . . . the extent to which human life and property may be endangered by the failure of the machine . . . the reliability required of the machine . . . the price class of the machine. Standards for factors of safety are all over the place. Most famously, the standard factor of safety for the cables in elevators is 11. So you could, if space allowed, pack eleven times as many people into an elevator as the placard says and possibly survive the ride. For many applications, 4 is considered to be a good number. In the shuttle program the standard factor of safety for all the ground equipment and tools is 4. When I was the Program Manager for the Space Shuttle, there were a number of times when a new engineering study would show that some tool either could be exposed to a higher maximum load than was previously thought, or that the original calculations were off by a small factor, or for some reason the tool could not meet the FS of 4. In those circumstances, the program manager with the concurrence of the safety officers could allow the use of the tool temporarily with special restrictions until a new tool could be designed and built. These waivers were always considered to be temporary and associated with special safety precautions so that work could go forward until the standard could once again be met with a new tool. In the aircraft industry, a factor of safety standard is 1.5. Think about that when you get on a commercial airliner some time. The slim factor of safety represents the importance of weight in aviation. It also means that much more time, engineering analysis, and testing has gone into the determination of maximum load and the properties of the parts on the plane. For some reason, lost in time, the standard FS for human space flight is 1.4, just slightly less than that for aviation. That extra 0.1 on the FS costs a huge amount of

engineering work, but pays dividends in weight savings. This FS is codified in the NASA Human Ratings Requirements for Space Systems, NPR 8705.2. Well, actually, that requirements document only references the detailed engineering design requirements where the 1.4 FS lives. Expendable launch vehicles are generally built to even lower factors of safety: 1.25 being commonplace and 1.1 also used at times. These lower factors of safety are a recognition of the additional risk that is allowed for cargo but not humans and the extreme importance of light weight. It is common for people to talk about human rating expendable launch vehicles with a poor understanding of what that means. Among other things, it means that the structure carrying the vast loads which rockets endure would have to be significantly redesigned to be stronger than it currently is. In many cases, this is tantamount to starting over in the design of the vehicle. So to the hoary old punch line: Would you want to put your life on the top of two million parts, each designed and manufactured by the lowest bidder?