ABSTRACT
Standards, both national and international, are used in the case of materials to ensure such things as consistency of quality, consistency in the use of terms, rationalisation of testing methods, and provide an efficient means of communication between interested parties. Thus if a material is stated by its producer to be to a certain standard, tested by the methods laid down by certain standards, then a customer need not have all the details written out of what properties and tests have been carried out by the producer in order to know what properties to expect of the material. There is, for example, the standard for tensile testing of metals (BSEN 10002, a European standard adopted as the British Standard and replacing BS 18). This lays down such things as the sizes of the test pieces to be used (see Chapter 3 for such details). There are standards for materials such as copper and copper alloy plate (BS 2875), steel plate, sheet and strip (BS 1449), the plastic polypropylene (BS 5139), etc. which lay down the composition and properties for such materials.
