Abstract

Many systems are intentionally built much stronger than needed for normal usage to allow for
emergency situations, unexpected loads, misuse, or degradation such as elevators (wire ropes)
and bridges structure. In the other hand some applications use factors of safety as low as
possible like aerospace industries.
Typical values of factor of safety for some applications

Application Factor of safety

Aircraft
1.5 – 2.5
components
Bolts 8.5 – 9
Engine
6–8
components
Heavy duty
10 – 12
shafting
Spring, large
4.5 – 5
heavy-duty
Structural steel
5–7
work in bridges
Wire ropes 8–9

Why aircrafts and aerospace industries use low factor of safety while applications like
elevators (wire ropes) use high values of it?
The user of the airplanes must fly in accordance with the established flight envelope, so higher
factors of safety will make it hard to control the airplane itself. We need the airplane to have a
light weight to make it easy to fly, if we had a higher factor of safety the mass of the
components will increase intensively. Another reason is the accidents that happen to the
airplanes applies huge stresses and very high temperatures and pressures, so even if we had a
high factor of safety it will not be safe enough to face these crashes, it will be spending lots of
money on something with no real value. Also, the existence of secondary safety systems in the
airplanes plays a huge role in lowering the factor of safety.
Ropes and chains may be subject to dynamic and sudden loads which may significantly exceed
the design static load - this is not really a concern for the aircraft because the enforced flight
envelope has essentially removed this unpredictability. Wire ropes expose a very large number
of cycles as well as fatigue loads, and it is of course hard to be changed or repaired so designers
choose high factor of safety to go through that large fatigue stresses and to prevent continuous
stopping of the system due to maintenance.
Done by: Hamzeh Hamoudeh (ID: 0152260)
Design lab section 2