Female perspective of Will it go in?

[Clive Mott]

My father in law always told his wife Joan that if she can find space inside the VW then it would be OK. I think that someone applied similar rules to the motorbike. Is this typical?
Asking for a friend.

 

[bladerunner]

"It's not full until it's broken"

A friend's wife later admitted leaving the spare wheel at home to make more room for the holiday trip.

The next year the hatch back was so full that the window popped out when she slammed shut the boot!

 

[tacr2man]

A bit like farmers , A good friend of mine used to build farm trailers , he would design and build to handle 15 ton , but sell them with a 10ton label , greatly reduced warranty calls !

 

[Guigsy]

A bit like farmers , A good friend of mine used to build farm trailers , he would design and build to handle 15 ton , but sell them with a 10ton label , greatly reduced warranty calls !

That's just an engineering safety factor. You can't model the exact maths for the interesting combination of scenarios that happen in real life. So you multiply with a safety factor. The higher the uncertainty, the higher the factor. 1.5 is pretty low compared to factors you'd design in a bridge.

 

[Brains]

That's just an engineering safety factor. You can't model the exact maths for the interesting combination of scenarios that happen in real life. So you multiply with a safety factor. The higher the uncertainty, the higher the factor. 1.5 is pretty low compared to factors you'd design in a bridge.

Most bridges built before 1850's were designed for the heaviest cart pullable by a team of horses, so about 5t max.
Many of those bridges are still in daily use and dealing with 2 x 40T HGV's on the bridge at the same time, multiple times every day.

Says a lot about the original design factors!

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[Guigsy]

Most bridges built before 1850's were designed for the heaviest cart pullable by a team of horses, so about 5t max.
Many of those bridges are still in daily use and dealing with 2 x 40T HGV's on the bridge at the same time, multiple times every day.

Says a lot about the original design factors!

They didn't really know what the load forces were through the structure, what the failure modes were, or how materials behaved under load. They just designed from experience of what didn't fail.

The other thing is, in many instances, the loads from road traffic are pretty minor. Self weight, wind loads or loads caused by heat expansion or water pressure against the abutment can often be far bigger issues. And it's those things that determine the majority of required strength and the traffic loading is a rounding error.