As part of the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing, the Advanced Structural Testing Centre (ASTC) is the only structural testing facility within a UK university to hold an ISO 17025 accreditation with a 'flexible scope'.

The accreditation from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) means the ASTC has licence to develop novel state-of-the-art testing methods that fall outside the scope of existing testing methods, or amend existing methods covering a range of fatigue, tensile and compressive force and pressure testing.

Following a recent visit to the ASTC, UKAS spoke to our Head of Structural Testing, Phil Spiers about the nature of their research and significance of this particular accreditation. You can read their profile of the centre here.