Testing Committee Report

By Charles Lucas, Chair

The Testing Committee, in cooperation with the Board of Directors, finally developed a foreword and an acceptable format for printing the 2003 UV study on slings. Each member of the Association should have received a copy of this study and I think you will agree it is a credit to the Association for producing a report of this caliber.

The Association also produced another UV study on webbing in 1980 that has some excellent information. Unfortunately, the graphs are somewhat difficult to read. The committee has been asked to see if those graphs could be updated and make that study a part of our total presentation on the effects of Ultra Violet degradation on webbing and slings. The committee is also exploring the development of a simplified synopsis of the data, that might be more beneficial to the user.

The committee also discussed the proper procedure for testing assignments. It was generally agreed that the individual product committees should generate a request for testing and have it approved by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors would make an assignment to the Testing Committee to write the protocol, establish a budget and report the results to the requesting committee and the Board of Directors. The individual product committees would then be responsible for interpreting the data and applying the results to future publications of their standard.

There was some discussion of the possibility of a UV study of polyester tiedowns. This has not yet been requested by the Tiedown Committee, or approved by the Board of Directors.

There had been some discussion at the previous meeting about the validity of our load charts for polyester web slings. It was decided that two members of the committee would do some independent testing to see if further testing was warranted. These members have not yet completed their testing.

AWRF has recently completed an edge cut study for webbing and the results were presented at the last meeting of AWRF. It is our hope to be able to discuss these results and compare them to an edge cut study that was previously performed by WSTDA.

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Web Sling & Tie Down Association

2105 Laurel Bush Rd. • Suite 200 • Bel Air, MD 21015 • phone: 443-640-1070 • fax: 443-640-1031 • wstda@ksgroup.org • www.wstda.com