prDS CWA 17815:2025

Materials characterization - Terminology and structured documentation

Scope

The objective of this CWA is to provide a standard set of concepts, metadata and terminology that form the basis for documentation of materials characterisation. Its aim is to cover the most wide-ranging in-terpretation of “materials characterisation”, including the whole range of processes by which the struc-ture and properties of a material, or even a system of materials, are ascertained. It includes any materials analysis process including macroscopic techniques. Also, the related field of materials testing is likely to benefit from this standardised documentation.
The CHADA starts with documenting the context and the rationale for the specific characterisation to be undertaken. For example, the performance of a candidate material (or combination of materials) for a given application could be determined by the appreciation of different material properties. Following that, the CHADA documents the material or materials systems under investigation and the sample(s) that are tested. Subsequently, the characterisation workflow is documented, covering all possible experi-mental and data processing workflow stages (with tables for each stage) until the aggregated outcome. The overall workflow consists of a combination of different workflow stages executed consecutively or in parallel.
The modular approach provides flexibility to repeat or skip stages depending on the case to be docu-mented. If necessary, attributes of entities can be added, extended, or otherwise enriched to describe their properties and specifications at the desired level of detail related to the domain of academic or in-dustrial expertise, and the intended scope or application.
Time series, multiple probes/samples and multi-materials cases (such as systems) can be documented by interpreting each concept to represent a list/series (that is, an array). By using the material and sam-ple entity as an array representing several materials in a system, the CHADA can be applied to the docu-mentation of the characterisation of materials systems, that is, systems of interacting materials (for ex-ample, tribological characterisations, structural health monitoring, component tests).
The output of a characterisation workflow can be either qualitative, semi-quantitative or quantitative. Finally, the outcome, which is the digestion and/or interpretation of the characterisation output(s), is presented.