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Mass Standards - Research Projects
 Mass
Density and volume
Pressure
Flow
Design, development, and implementation of equipment, programs, policies, and procedures for dissemination of the kilogram mass unit via the national prototype to industry, government, and university laboratories in support of Canadian legal mass metrology.
- Calibration of stable materials, particularly brass and stainless steel, traceable to national prototype of the kilogram, in the range 1 mg to 50 kg with relative standard uncertainties (RSU) from 20 parts per million (ppm) to 0.05 ppm.
- Calibration of weights: orthogonal calibrations, loading weights for dead weight gauges, high quality weights, and reference kilograms.
- Measurement of the derived quantity of density, whose SI unit is the kilogram per metre cubed (kg/m3), in terms of pure water via quartz transfer standards.
- Calibration of hydrometers.
- Determination of the densities of solids, in particular weights, by hydrostatic weighing in the range 1 500 kg/m3 to 17 500 kg/m3 with an RSU of 30 ppm at the 1 kg mass level.
- Determination of the densities of liquids in the range 600 kg/m3 to 1 800 kg/m3 with a typical RSU of 5 ppm.
- Calibration of precision pycnometers traceable to base SI quantities, calibration of specialized pycnometers and other unusual volume standards
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Measure of the density of a stainless steel kilogram by weighing in de-ionized double distilled water. |
Single crystal of silicon with mass
4.8 kg. Spheroids, ellipsoids or
ovoids will be made of this crystal
in the Institute's Optics Shop. |
Calibration of a hydrometer by weighing in
de-ionised double distilled water by
the Cuckow method. |
 Establishment and improvement of the traceability of the SI unit of pressure, the pascal, in support of trade, legal metrology, and industrial and government activities.
- Realization of the pascal by means of a 1.5 metre mercury manometer. This instrument provides direct pressure generation and measurement in the range of a few hundred pascals to 200 kPa with an RSU of 4 ppm.
- Calibration of pressure gauges up to 100 MPa range using pneumatic dead weight pressure balances with an RSU of 10 ppm to 100 ppm.
- Calibration of pressure gauges up to 280 MPa range using hydraulic dead weight pressure balances with an RSU of 30 ppm to 1000 ppm.
- Traceability of humidity measurements via temperature and pressure.
The project provides the derived unit of mass flow in the gas phase - the kilogram per second -, traceable to national standards. Two types of flow standards are used: one is a mercury sealed piston prover and the other is based on laminar flow elements. A variety of flow devices can be calibrated to an accuracy of 0.2 %, covering a flow range of 5 standard cubic centimeters per minute to 50 litres per minute. A gravimetric system, for direct measurement of the mass of gas lost per unit of time from a tank of compressed gas, is planned for the near future.
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