Originally Posted by yugyug

I am guessing there might testing for certification standards like there are in furniture. Basically if a chair needs to be approved for mass sale in a lot of places a sample has to be provided to an organisation, like a university, who puts the chair on a machine which simulates somebody sitting down and getting up a thousand times or more until it breaks, or doesn't break. They do it for cars too, they must do this for bicycles and I'd be interested in finding out more about it. It doesn't necessarily give any information as to how a material will degrade over time (decomposition from use + weather + ?), but it would indicate which frames are generally tougher.