Which organisations grade steel?

A number of standard organisations grade steel.

American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM): It is one of the largest voluntary standards development organisations in the world. Established more than a century ago, it is a source for technical standards for materials, products, systems and services.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE): They assign SAE steel grades. These are four digit numbers which represent chemical composition standards for steel specifications.

British Standards: This is given by British Standards Institution (BSI) under a Royal Charter, designated as National Standards Body (NSB). The standards approved are marked British Standard XXXX[-P]:YYYY, where XXXX represents the number of the standard (BSI has over 27,000 standards), P is the number of part of the standard (if the standard is split in multiple parts) and YYYY is the year in which the standard came into effect. After compliance with all standards the steel is awarded the ‘Kitemark’.

International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO): The approved ISO mark consists of ISO [TS] nnnn [yyyy]. The ‘TS’ mark stands for steel, various products have different trademarks, nnnn is the number of the standard, yyyy is the year. For example: ISO/TS 4949:2006.