Global Standardization of the Acquisition and Presentation of Comparable Data on Plastics 940438

One of the problems faced by design engineers, as well as anyone involved in resin selection in the automotive industry, is access to comparable data among similar products from different material suppliers. This stems from the lack of standardization in the acquisition and reporting format for materials properties data in the plastics industry. Currently, a multiplicity of national test standards are widely used in the acquisition of materials properties data, which often allow a broad flexibility in the choice of test specimen shapes and geometry, conditions for preparing the test specimens, test variables, and test conditions, as well as units, rendering any comparison between materials extremely difficult. ISO 10350, and 11403 parts 1, 2, and 3 were developed specifically to address these issues for the acquisition of the data and the C A M P U S ® database was developed as a tool for standardization of the reporting format for plastics properties. These efforts are well suited to meet the growing need of the automotive industry for comparable data on a global basis. The key benefits are cost savings to both the OEMs and the material suppliers. This paper will discuss how these objectives are achieved by the worldwide standardization efforts and the experience gained to date.