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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.
For Structural Steel:
Allowable stress in bending = 2/3 F
y
F
b
= 2/3(36 ksi) = 24 ksi (= 167MPa)
(Allowable bending stress)
F
B
= 24 ksi
(167 MPa)
F
y
= 36 ksi
(250 MPa)
Allowable Stress and Factor of Safety
Illustration: Barry Onouye and Kevin Kane: Statics and Strength of Materials for
Architecture and Building Construction, second edition; Prentice-Hall, 2001
Figure 5.22, p. 282
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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 < F
ult
(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.