Campin LI wrote:As a civil engineer whose working career was mainly devoted to research and development on the structural design and analysis of offshore drilling and production structures, I am astounded by this statement. When it comes to factors of safety, there is no such thing as "usually". I suggest you read this, which is highly generalized, but should give you some idea of how much variability there is in factors of safety.
Usually when engineers design things or analyze them to this degree, there is a 33 1/3% factor of safety involved.---
---I never see the factor of safety included in these analysis and that is why some people end up not being happy with their setups.---If a factor of safety were known, how would it prevent people from not being happy with their setups? If someone knew that a 1000#-rated WD bar would fail at a static load of 3000#, how would that keep them from being unhappy?
---The factor of safety was probably (I don't know for sure) included when the limits analyzed with the utility were set by the manufacturers, so I believe there is some wiggle room either way with respect to weight limits, but the same factor of safety should be used when analyzing your weights.---If a manufacturer's factor of safety were known, how would one use that FoS when analyzing weights? Can you give a specific example?
---I'm not saying a 1 ton dually is needed to tow a popup, but rest assured, when the owner says he doesn't know it's back there, he's telling the truth (even if it's swaying all over the place):)If a 1 ton dually is not needed to tow a popup -- then what is your point?
