Together with partners in the OYSTER project, Goldbeck Consulting is involved in an effort to standardise terminology, classification and documentation of materials characterisation by means of a CEN Workshop Agreement. We are pleased to announce that this initiative has been nominated for a CEN Standards + Innovation Project Award 2020.

A standardised terminology will improve communication and interoperability in the entire area of materials characterisation and reduce the barrier to utilising advanced materials characterisation in industry. The standardisation developments will support efficient solutions for materials characterisation, enhance the communication, dissemination, storage, retrieval and mining of data about materials characterisation and contribute to efforts for materials digitalisation.

The effort is carried out in the context of the project OYSTER which makes use of recent advances in experiments and modelling of nano-scale contact mechanics to develop an Open Innovation Environment (OIE) that will boost dramatically the development of nano-patterned, nano-engineered or chemically modified devices with controlled surface free energy and adhesive properties. To achieve such goals, OYSTER has been developing novel formats for materials characterisation data (called “CHADA”), which will be combined with innovative ontologies and data management plans to attempt the establishment of unified standards for the digital representation of materials characterisation experiments.

The CEN Workshop Agreement also builds on a related CWA on Materials Modelling Terminology, Classification and Metadata, CWA 17284, which was led by Goldbeck Consulting.