Discussion on “Analysis on the Issues in ISO 6892-1 and TENSTAND WP4 Report Based on the Data of Confirm Tests by 21 Laboratories” – A Refutation of International Tensile Testing Experts

The authors, Li et al., of the paper entitled “Analysis on the Issues in ISO 6892-1 and TENSTAND WP4 Report Based on Data to Confirm Tests by 21 Laboratories” (J. Test. Eval. DOI: 10.1520/JTE20150479 (online only)) have expressed views that the authors of this rebuttal believe to be based on fundamental misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the tensile testing standard ISO 6892-1:2009, ISO 6892-1:2016, and its former versions, thus leading to erroneous conclusions. This refutation is intended to clarify the understanding of ISO 6892-1 and to address the misunderstandings and the misinterpretations of the authors of the paper. The present standard ISO 6892-1:2016 has a long history dating back to the 1970s. At that time, the tensile testing procedure was standardized on the National and International scale in parallel. To understand the present standard, the knowledge of the history helps to understand the background of details of the testing procedure implemented today. The history of the tensile testing standard has been discussed extensively during the annual international standardization meeting of ISO committee TC 164 SC1 for the last few years, at which some of the authors of the Li et al. paper attended. The authors continue to disagree with facts that were agreed by the consortium of the European research project TENSTAND and by the present international experts involved in ISO TC 164 SC1. It appears that the principal objective of the authors regarding their present publication was to increase the testing speed during tensile testing. However, the international standardization community has previously declined similar proposals by some of the authors. Many arguments presented by Li et al. were thus refuted. The conclusions of their paper are misleading and the international standardization community for tensile testing refused to revise the present standard, ISO 6892-1 (2016), according the authors' proposals.