Abstract
This paper examines the undesirable yet inevitable influence of loading system compliance on specimen deformation measurements during testing—a problem that has become typical and remains consistently relevant in the field of mechanical materials testing. Of the two possible approaches to addressing this issue—increasing the stiffness of the loading system or applying corrections to the measurement results—this work focuses primarily on the latter. A mathematical model describing the interaction between loading system components was developed using mixed additive-multiplicative scaling, and a cost-effective method for neutralizing the effect of loading system compliance was proposed. It is demonstrated that applying this method is theoretically equivalent to conducting tests on a virtual machine with infinite loading system stiffness. The method utilizes load-displacement data obtained from two compression tests performed under identical conditions: one with the specimen and one without it. The method was validated using aluminum specimens by comparing the calculated elastic modulus (75.6 GPa) with the established reference range (72–75 GPa). Additionally, the method was used to determine the elastic modulus of amphibolite and to generate corrected load-displacement diagrams. A comparative analysis revealed a source of error inherent in the traditional compliance summation method. Overall, the proposed approach, model, and method—based on additive-multiplicative correction of compression test results—offer a structured and interpretable supplement to traditional techniques, opening new avenues for enhancing the accuracy of both direct and indirect measurements of material properties.