The paper presents some technical aspects about the Romanian system built-up to ensure the traceability of force measurements to the SI units. The regulations of the traceability schemes and the steps to be followed are presented. The Force Laboratory Timisoara, pending of Romanian Bureau of Legal Metrology proposed and implemented the national traceability of force measurements. The paper presents the best measurements capabilities, which the Romanian calibration laboratories offer for force measurements. In order to perform a national and international validation of the force measurements in Romania, the traceability system must be in accordance with the national and international standards. One of the major parameters of the traceability system is the uncertainty associated with calibration or measurement results. This trend is based on the explosive implementation of the ISO 9000 series and ISO 17025 requirements in industry and other fields. The Romanian Government putted forward some regulations in order to provide for the necessary conditions to report the results to the acknowledged standards.

Logboats are present on many continents. Despite being made of a tree-trunk, they cannot be simplified to only one building tradition. In Italy, the main studies usually list the findings, but we lack knowledge about the timber and the vessel construction. In our study, 16 logboats, for a total of 69 samples, were analyzed to identify the tree species used in the different parts of the boats. Different tree species were identified, including oak (Quercus sp.), chestnut (Castanea sativa), and elm (Ulmus sp.). We found dogwood (Cornus mas) and willow (Salix sp.) in treenails, and in some cases, we detected the use of pieces of bark and phloem. Long believed to have been dug out from a single tree, our results demonstrate that these logboats also contain components made from woods different from the main hull. Thus, the traditionally accepted nomenclature seems inappropriate and likely to confuse research efforts.

The triple point of xenon has recently been shown to be a suitable fixed point for incorporation into the next revision of the International Temperature Scale as a means to reduce the non-uniqueness in the important 84 K to 273 K range. We summarize the results, which illustrate that the xenon triple point itself is highly reproducible, with a standard deviation of 48 µK for the eight melts of this study, and a total realization uncertainty of just 76 µK.

During the last years of research, flow measurement by the cross correlation method made much progress concerning accuracy and reliability. Especially for gaseous fluid the signal processing was far improved by new demodulation techniques such as undersampling and complex demodulation. This allows new insights into the physical principle of interaction between ultrasound and fluid introduced in this paper.

The paper presents a practical example for the evaluation of the uncertainty in calibration using a comparison force standard machine with a maximum load of 1000 kN, tension and compression mode. The uncertainty of measurement associated with the input estimates is evaluated. It is also presented a way to minimize the uncertainty of the applied force with the view to attaining the necessary value for the calibration of class 1 force transducers, in accordance with ISO 376:1999. For this purpose an evaluation of the loading regime of the force machine is presented. There was identified the main input components influencing the uncertainty in calibrations, such as the force stability during measurements and the metrological characteristics of the reference transducers. Further are presented the practical results of the investigation of the force comparison machine after the optimization, including the technical and economical benefits.