3 ms·

I would disagree. System failure modes can be quite complex. Yes you may have a good approximation of a material's Ultimate Tensile Strength through lab testing

I would disagree. System failure modes can be quite complex. Yes you may have a good approximation of a material's Ultimate Tensile Strength through lab testing (although it isn't a single number and can be affected by a lot of variables, so it's usually designated as a range). But if your material yielded in a way that didn't account for, it could affect the loading on a different member, and trigger an issue with an entirely different part. Real world systems are more complex than your freshman year Statics assignments

WalterBright 8y ago
Actually, I worked for Boeing on gearbox design. So I am fairly aware of strength of materials and did a lot of such computations. If you're unsure of the strength, you use the minimum guaranteed value. You don't use materials for critical pieces for which you don't have any data. That would be incredible incompetence. Again, what I am talking about is using statics to determine the minimum loadings to check against the computer models, which should predict higher values or they are wrong. This is not difficult.