Margin Vector

Overlaying the Design-To and Allowable Load Envelopes provides a visual way to understand the performance of a structure. If the Allowable Envelope completely contains the Design-To Envelope, the structure's current design will satisfy all load cases, and therefore has a positive margin of safety. This can be both visually and mathematically quantified by a Margin of Safety Vector between the two envelopes, illustrated by the green vectors in the image below.

Note

Unless the Allowable Load is set to "Actual Loads" on the Settings Pane, the margins of safety shown in this view are approximate, they are not expected to exactly match the HyperX margins of safety. To see margin vectors corresponding to HyperX results, toggle to Actual Loads.

Let's look at just the Nx, Ny load plane. For a given structure, a Design-to Load Envelope is plotted below in blue.

For this envelope, we'll focus on just one vector.

The same structure also results in the Allowable Envelope shown in grey.

A vector can also be drawn from the origin to this allowable surface in the same orientation as the Design-to vector of choice.

The Margin Vector is given by the difference between the Allowable vector and the Design-to vector.

The actual Margin of safety can be approximated as the ratio of the length of the two vectors:

Margin Vectors are enabled from the View tab of the HyperLoads Ribbon.

A Margin Vector can be drawn in between any load vector and corresponding allowable surface combination. The dropdown menu gives users the ability to select which view they prefer. The image above, is showing "All" margin vectors - one for each Design-to Load vector - rather than, for example, just the critical one.

It is also useful to label margin vectors using the Data Probe. Labels can be tailored to show only desired points of interest about the margin. Use the "Label All" option if you have multiple Margin Vectors plotted - this way all vectors will be labeled automatically, rather than having to label them one-by-one.