Articles tagged Safety margin/factor guidelines

A published set of safety margin requirements for specific situations or applications. Such guidelines offer policy guidance and details for use during the design and verification of an item.

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Derating & Safety Margin Manual

Do you have one in your organization? Is it used regularly?

If not, your organization’s products are likely not as reliable as they should be. You are shipping products that are not as robust nor reliable as your customers deserve.

Derating and Safety Factors, defined earlier, provide a means to select components or create design features that have sufficient margin to accommodate variation in use and strength over time.

So why are these tools routinely ignored or given only fleeting attention? [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

Safety Factor

Products that fail may create an unsafe situation.

For catastrophic failure mechanisms, the design team may consider establishing a safety factor or margin of safety policy. This provides the design team guidance as they size structures, select components, and evaluate performance and reliability.

A safety factor or margin are measures of the separation of the stress and strength for a specific failure mechanism. If something has a 2x safety factor it implies the element is twice as strong as the expected stress. [Read more…]