Safe Technology’s fe-safe Software Delivers Lightweight Parts for Race Car Designers

By DE Editors

Engineering specialist, Pratt & Miller, has adopted Safe Technology’s fe-safe fatigue analysis software to predict fatigue life on all mission critical components in the company’s race cars.

With weight a primary consideration in motorsport, fe-safe is now used on all Pratt & Miller’s race car suspension and frame components to optimize design by reducing unnecessary material and therefore weight, while maintaining target fatigue life.

fe-safe determines how much the stresses must be changed in order to achieve the target design life—in this case the end of a race—showing where the component is under or over-strength and most importantly for motorsport, where materials and weight can be reduced without compromising on safety.

“Since our parts are optimized to the lightest possible configuration, all our primary load structures are now routinely analyzed using fe-safe,” says Gary Latham, design office manager, Pratt & Miller. “It is critical that the design is optimized to be as light as possible while ensuring the component does not fail during a race. This is why fe-safe is so useful; it offers increased confidence that our designs are right first time and allows us to deliver lightweight parts to a lower target fatigue life factor than our competition.”

For more information, visit Safe Technology Ltd.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.