Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

Every material has a certain capacity to carry load, but unsafe to load a material to full capacity it would have no reserve strength. This is dangerous because:

May experience a load greater than anticipated Material may be defective Construction may be faulty (fabrication / erection / workmanship, etc.) Other unforeseen situation (calculation errors, etc)

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

Remedy: Apply a Factor of Safety (F.S.) that provides a margin for error and uncertainty Factor of ignorance (i.e., not possible to know everything) Two general approaches employed in engineering design:

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

1. Based on yield stress (elastic material) or other predetermined strain amount (for an inelastic materiale.g. for concrete, the stress at a strain of 0.3% (0.003 in/in)).
In this case, the stress is reduced from the yield or other specified maximum to get the allowable stress and is known as the Allowable Stress Design Method. This is the earliest and most tradition design method, also least involved computationally.

Illustration: Barry Onouye and Kevin Kane: Statics and Strength of Materials for Architecture and Building Construction, second edition; Prentice-Hall, 2001

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

Fy = 36 ksi (250 MPa) FB = 24 ksi

(167 MPa)

For Structural Steel:

Allowable stress in bending = 2/3 Fy Fb = 2/3(36 ksi) = 24 ksi (= 167MPa) (Allowable bending stress)

Figure 5.22, p. 282

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

2. Based on the ultimate strength of material (Known as the Limit State Design Method):
Instead of reducing the allowable stress, use ultimate strength and apply multipliers to loads, since generally know the material capacity more accurately than anticipated loads (e.g., 1.4xDL + 1.7xLL < Fult (for concrete design). More rational and exact approach. Can lead to material savings by reducing size of members, however is more laborious in calculation so is often not cost effective for engineering except larger scale projects. Also lighter members can be controlled by deflection.

Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety

2. Based on the ultimate strength of material (Known as the Limit State Design Method):
Known as Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) for steel and wood Known as Ultimate Strength Design (UDS) for concrete (now the predominate method for this material since more accurately models stress behavior inside members) Trend of industry is toward Limit State Design. Concrete led the way in the 1960s; steel is in transition and wood not far behind.