Management of reference measurement standards as part of Smart Metrology: Gauge Blocks

¹ Deltamu, 48 Rue de Sarliève, 63800 Cournon d’Auvergne
² PSA Group, C.T. de Vèlizy A, 2, route de Gisy 78943 Vélizy-Villacoublay Cedex,

^* Corresponding author: jmpou@deltamu.com
^** Corresponding author: laurent.leblond1@mpsa.com

Abstract

The question of traceability of measurement standards used for calibration is a crucial one. Optimized or not, calendar periodicity is one of the accepted pillars of quality in measurement standard verification. Aware that this practice by itself cannot guarantee the metrological performance of measurement standards, laboratories make a point of also resorting to monitoring. In fact, calibrating independent and diverse instrumentation should of itself provide the means to detect problems with the reference gauges. Indeed, there is no logical reason why a collection of independent measurement instrumentation should, on average, have a common bias. If such a bias were observed, it would most likely point to a bias in the reference gauge used for the calibrations. In this paper, this argument is investigated with reference to a practical example of gauge block calibration.