Center for Measurement Standards (CMS) had established a thin-film indentation testing system based on Akashi MZT-522. The electronic balance was made use of calibrating the testing force and the internal depth sensor was calibrated by laser hologauge. Five other uncertainty was also evaluated in the paper. Finally, the uncertainty of the thin-film indentation testing system reached a total of 5.02 %.

The paper describes calibration method of portable Brinell hardness testers, which have been manufactured for many years and used popularly in China, especially used in testing hardness of ferrous metals. A series of experiment have been done concerning hardness levels for calibration, thickness of hardness blocks, supports of the blocks, diameters of ball indenters and touch-method between the block and the support. Based on result obtained from tests mentioned above, it is given that specifications of portable Brinell hardness testers including indication error of 7%, repeatability of 4%, etc. Besides that, this paper, also, provide an equation of Brinell values vs indentation diameters based on a table, which could be useful for application of the testers.

This bilateral comparison in HRC between National Metrology Institute of Japan, (NMIJ) and National Institute of Metrology (Thailand), (NIMT) was done in order to establish the hardness scales of NIMT and confirm their accuracy, which was designated by NIMT ( 0.45 HRC). The hardness blocks of 20 HRC, 30 HRC, 40 HRC and 60 HRC, which all have uniformity within 0.1 HRC according to EN ISO 6508-3, were used in this comparison. They were measured by NMIJ and NIMT with different conditions in order to indicate the performance of machines and hardness scales. Agreement of machine performance is within ± 0.13 HRC and agreement of hardness scales is within ± 0.24 HRC.

In the early of 2003, the traceability system of the Rockwell hardness standard have been developed in Japan. The National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ) started to provide the national primary hardness standards, one of which is the hardness reference blocks, and the other one is the accreditation of the Rockwell hardness tester. In this paper, we present the detail of uncertainty transfer between the NMIJ and the secondary standard laboratories.

The mechanical properties of adhesives are determined either from bulk material samples from adhesively bonded joints. For many years there has been controversy as to whether the mechanical properties obtained through testing bulk material are representative of the adhesive in its thin-film form. The use of adhesive bonding as a method of joining structural members in advanced structures is increasing. A major advantage of adhesive bonding is that it enables dissimilar materials to be joined and reduces the localized stresses encountered when using mechanical fastening such as bolts and rivets. In design process it is important to know unambiguously the mechanical properties of the materials being used. Because the adhesive is used in thin-film from, to obtain the mechanical characteristics of the adhesive in situ is hoped. In several papers it has been found that the adhesive material has different mechanical properties when tested in the thin-film form and bulk form, and further that a thickness effect exists, causing the properties to depend on the thickness of the bondline. However, the good agreement between thin-film and bulk properties is obtained in other papers. Moreover, the existence of the boundary layer in the adhesive layer is reported. In this paper, nano-indentation testing is carried out for the calibration specimens and two kinds of the specimens of adhesive. And the method in the former paper applied to know the distribution of local mechanical properties in the adhesive layers and the bulk material.