3 Replies Latest reply on Aug 21, 2009 4:01 PM by Jose Eduardo Fernandes de Camargo

    Factor of Safety (FOS) limited to 100

    Bill Eaton
    Bill Eaton Jul 15, 2009 11:53 AM

      CosmosWorks (and now Simulation) has always thresholded FOS plots to 100. So for a very safe part/assembly, everything comes out blue. I can see why someone might say "why do you care?" The answer is, I'm tired of explaining this behavior to people not familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Simulation. And my use model cannot be unique. I am the only finite element analyst in my organization and I am always presenting my results to people unfamiliar with Simulation. I don't want to continuosly educate everyone, and they're not that interested in being educated.

       

      I suppose there are workarounds. I could scale back the loads to the point where I get some color back in my plots. But then I'm back to the same problem: explaining  things.

       

      A far better solution would be for me to have plots that aren't thresholded to an arbritray FOS of 100. Sure, anything above 100 is a little ridiculous. But so what? Why not give me the freedom to plot it and keep my customers happy?

      • 2351 Views
      • Categories: Simulation
      • Tags:
        • Re: Factor of Safety (FOS) limited to 100
          Bill Eaton
          Bill Eaton Jul 15, 2009 1:39 PM (in response to Bill Eaton)

          I've discovered a very scary, very labor intensive workaround. Here is a part with FOS 3500. Everything is thresholded to 100

          no multiplication.png

          1. Change multiplication factor for plot to some negative power of 10 ( 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001) depending on your Min FOS. I used 0.001. Now my displayed Min FOS is 3.5.

          multiplication.png

          2. Bring screen shot into Photoshop or other image editing program and change all of the exponents on all of the numbers.

          fudged with multiplication.png

          This result is something I can show to my boss. But it scares the hell out of me and it's a lot of unnecessary work. I SHOULDN"T have to do this.
            • Re: Factor of Safety (FOS) limited to 100
              Ameer Chilakala
              Ameer Chilakala Jul 16, 2009 2:08 AM (in response to Bill Eaton)

              Hi,

              I hope it is limitation in the simulation, i.e. we can't change the FOS chart options.

               

              The maximum value shows 100. While plotting the FOS, if you changing the multiplication factor means, you are editing the yield strength of the material, not the load value. While designing the products, we will consider the FOS value it may be 10 or more etc. Depending upon the product design the FOS may be varies. In your case, you are getting more than 3000 FOS, as per your knowledge its right i.e. the component with stand 3000*applied load. Kindly check the material yield strength, load units in your problem.