Publications

Calculating Measurement Uncertainty of the “Conventional Value of the Result of Weighing in Air”

Tran, Hy D.; Flicker, Celia J.

The conventional value of the result of weighing in air is frequently used in commercial calibrations of balances. The guidance in OIML D-028 for reporting uncertainty of the conventional value is too terse. When calibrating mass standards at low measurement uncertainties, it is necessary to perform a buoyancy correction before reporting the result. When calculating the conventional result after calibrating true mass, the uncertainty due to calculating the conventional result is correlated with the buoyancy correction. We show through Monte Carlo simulations that the measurement uncertainty of the conventional result is less than the measurement uncertainty when reporting true mass. The Monte Carlo simulation tool is available in the online version of this article.