Uniform nomenclature for testing equipment

Abstract

nomenclature for the purpose of attaining uniformity and raising the technical level in providing metrological-service agencies with testing equipment, and thus raising the efficiency of state supervision and departmental inspection of the measuring-equipment condition and application is one of the basic problems which is entailed in providing metrological services with testing equipment [i], and whose solution is envisaged in the program for the technical re-equipment of test laboratories in the Tenth Five-Year Plan [2]. The state and trade standards, as well as methodic directives and instructions on testing means and methods constitute a set of normative and technical documents within the State System for Ensuring Uniform Measurements (GSI) [3] and serve to regulate the composition of the test-equipment stocks (nomenclature), as well as the conditions and procedure of their application in the metrological-service testing sections. Standards specify testing means and methods, as a rule, for groups of similar-type measuring instruments combined according to their principle for measuring a given physical quantity, they also specify the designing for them of uniform testing equipment. However, for the purpose of utilizing existing equipment, the standards tolerate the inclusion of similar-precisio n duplicating testing instruments [4]. In standards of this category in all types of measurements submitted to scientific and technical examination, requirements are as yet lacking for uniformity in selecting appropriate testing equipment. Moreover, the testing equipment recommended in the normative and technical documents (NTD) for testing means and methods becomes often technically obsolete and its production discontinued before an appropriate normative document is drafted. There also exist several other deficiencies in organizing the development and production of testing means for equipping metrological agencies [2]. Under these conditions the selection of testing equipment for specific metrological agencies is often insufficiently well determined, and as a result of this different testing means are used for the same measuring equipment and their nomenclature is extended indefinitely in metrological services. In applying the uniform measuring-equipment principle, serious impediments arise owing to an insufficiently efficient testing-equipment The lack of a normative-informational document for specifying uniform testing-equipment clature with respect to all types of measurements has a negative effect on the efficient operation of metrological services in other countries as well. Wherever it is necessary to equip metrological laboratories with testing means, especially in organizing new types of testing, it becomes necessary to obtain information on working standards, as well as reference and auxiliary testing means recommended for application in the national metrological service [5] in order to ensure uniformity in the means and methods used for testing the same measuring equipment. This objective is aimed at by the normative-reference document on "Collection of measuring-equipment sets" which was compiled by the USSR State Committee of Standards (Gosstandart) metrological institutes as a result of analyzing metrological provisions for various types of measurements and is intended to specify uniform nomenclature for testing means recommended for equipping metrological services [2]. The previously existing documents for determining the testing-equipment nomenclature