The Material Measurement Lab at NIST makes certified reference materials for steel composition, hardness, and toughness that help producers control quality and performance aspects during manufacturing, and give buyers confidence that products meet their specifications.
Hundreds of varieties of steel are used for applications as small as surgical tools and as large as sky scrapers. Since the chemical composition helps to ensure the characteristics of the final products, providing corrosion resistance to clamps and scalpels or high strength to pipelines, we make reference materials that manufacturers use to check instruments for the chemical analysis of alloys.
For testing toughness, the $10 billion-a-year structural steel industry relies on the NIST Charpy Machine Verification Program, which both produces and certifies specimens for use in impact test machines, and works directly with over 1,500 test labs per year to diagnose problems that may arise during verification testing.
We also participate in and provide leadership to ASTM and ISO committees, sharing our expertise, research, and experience with the community. Testing based on certified reference values and standards provides a common language for manufacturing, buying, and selling steel.
>130 million tons of steel are qualified each year with test machines traceable to NIST
>1,500 customers each year depend on NIST for testing the toughness of steel
7,000 copies of the NIST Recommended Practice Guide on Rockwell Hardness Measurement have been requested. Rockwell is just one of the many hardness tests we support