Measurement quality and uncertainty evaluation in civil engineering research

¹ Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil, Av. do Brasil 101, 1700-066 Lisboa, Portugal
² Laboratório Regional de Engenharia Civil, Rua Agostinho Pereira de Oliveira, 9000-264 Funchal, Portugal

^⋆ Correspondence: asribeiro@lnec.pt

Received: 12 April 2012
Accepted: 16 July 2013

Abstract

Civil engineering is a branch of science that covers a broad range of areas where experimental procedures often plays an important role. The research in this field is usually supported by experimental structures able to test physical and mathematical models and to provide measurement results with acceptable accuracy. To assure measurement quality, a metrology probabilistic approach can provide valuable mathematical and computational tools especially suited to the study, evaluation and improvement of measurement processes in its different components (modeling, instrumentation performance, data processing, data validation and traceability), emphasizing measurement uncertainty evaluation as a tool to the analysis of results and to promote the quality and capacity associated with decision-making. This paper presents some of the research held by the metrology division of the Portuguese civil engineering research institutes, focused on the contribution of measurement uncertainty studies to a variety of frameworks, such as testing for metrological characterization and physical and mathematical modeling. Experimental data will be used to illustrate practical cases.