7/29/2019 safety factor, engineering,

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/safety-factor-engineering 1/1

“Engineering is the art of 

modelling materials we do not wholly understand

into shapes we cannot precisely analyse

to resist loads we cannot properly assess

in such a way that the community has no reason to suspect the extent of our 

ignorance.”

Fortunately there are the safety factors and thus our structures have not failed yet…

I think that a good measure to estimate the knowledge of an engineer can be the

following:

It is equal to the ratio of the grade of one’s degree in engineering to the safety factor with which one designs his structures:

 DEGREE 

 ENGINEERING GRADE 

SAFETY  KNOWLEDGE 

 FACTOR

  ÷    = ÷     ÷  

For example if somebody has finished the university with a grade 9/10 in his degree,and designs his structures with FS=1.5, he has knowledge equal to

9/1.5/10=6/10=0.6=60%.

Think about it… How much knowledge do you possess and how can you make it

larger?