Verification and Validation Standards
Formal standards codify V&V terminology and procedures so that credibility claims mean the same thing across organizations.
Codifying the Practice
Verification and validation matured from informal good practice into formal standards published by engineering bodies. These standards fix the terminology, define procedures, and set expectations for evidence, so that a claim of verification or validation means the same thing across organizations and can be audited against a common reference rather than each group inventing its own definitions.
What the Standards Provide
- Precise definitions that separate verification, validation, and calibration.
- Procedures for code verification, including order-of-accuracy testing.
- Procedures for solution verification, including mesh-refinement error estimation.
- Frameworks for validation experiments and validation metrics.
- Requirements for uncertainty quantification in the reported results.
Domain Specialization
General V&V standards are supplemented by domain-specific ones for computational fluid dynamics, heat transfer, solid mechanics, and nuclear applications, which adapt the general framework to the phenomena and regulatory context of each field. Nuclear and safety-critical domains carry the heaviest requirements, because decisions based on the simulations have the largest consequences and face regulatory scrutiny.
Using Standards Well
Following a standard does not by itself make a simulation credible; it provides a structured, auditable way to assemble and report the evidence. The value is common language and completeness: a standard-compliant V&V report covers verification, validation, and uncertainty in a form a reviewer can check systematically, and it prevents the selective reporting where only the flattering evidence appears.
Even where formal certification is not required, adopting the vocabulary and structure of these standards improves internal discipline. It forces a project to ask, for every claim, what verification supports it, what validation supports it, and what the uncertainty is, in language that others already understand. That structure is what turns scattered good intentions into a defensible credibility case.