Without a reduction in the experimentally induced variability in mechanical property tests, material and design advances will not be able to meet their intended goals.
Increasingly, industry is recognizing the importance of maintaining correctly aligned load frames and insisting on tighter alignment requirements. To supply material testing data to the aerospace or defense industries, laboratories must now ensure their load frames are aligned on at least an annual basis. Aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus, and government agencies such as NASA and the U.S. Air Force, are now auditing their suppliers for compliance with existing alignment standards.