Example: An exercise bike that can support 250 lb. Does the engineer find a large enough weight that deforms the bike, then take a fraction of that as the amount it can support?
In: Engineering
A lot of engineering is about testing things and seeing what breaks. We then turn that into math and calculations (in general, it’s not one engineering doing this every time they design something, it’s based on decades or centuries of data and work). We take that data, usually conveniently published in books or other resources, and figure out how much weight a structure could hold. We then use a safety factor (in civil we typically use anywhere from 1.25 to 3.0 depending on what we’re doing) to give the rating.
For example, if all our data and math says a piece of circular metal with x inner radius and y outer radius holds 500 pouinds, and if our factor of safety was 2 (I don’t know if it would be, that’s not my area, just a convenient number), then we’d say the maximum load would be 250 pounds.
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