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John Houle: Senior Technical Consultant, PVC Pipe Industry
John Houle holds a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Missouri and an MBA from the University of Oregon. He has more than 25 years of experience in the plastic pipe industry in applications engineering, market development, forensic analysis, technical writing, and standards development.
There has been confusion recently in the plastic pipe industry regarding the terms “design factor” (DF) and “safety factor” (SF).
Mathematically, the relationship is simple: DF is the inverse of SF. At least three AWWA standards state explicitly in the definition for DF that design factor is “the inverse of the safety factor.”
The attached technical brief discusses the relationship between the two concepts in more detail. To further illustrate the point, the brief includes a table of numerical examples from AWWA product standards for plastic transmission/distribution pipe. In all cases the design factor is 0.50 and the safety factor is 2.0.
Click here to read.
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