factor of safety

1. 1.

   the ratio of the breaking stress of a structure to the estimated maximum stress in ordinary use

   Synonymssafety factor

   Broaderratio

Questions about factor of safety

What does factor of safety mean?

factor of safety means "the ratio of the breaking stress of a structure to the estimated maximum stress in ordinary use".

What is another word for factor of safety?

Close synonyms include safety factor. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is factor of safety a common word?

factor of safety is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.