The withdrawal of standards by ASTM is oftentimes dictated by the ability of the committee members to work on updates and address issues. I admit that I am part of the problem in that as a member, I vote on the changes but, I haven't really participated in the process of rewriting. I was surprised how much time and paper it took to address one of my comments (not even a negative vote, just a comment!!!) regarding a concrete field test.
I believe that is what is going on with D1143 & D3966. It has been a couple of years and I don't quite remember the actual circumstances for these withdrawals. I am sure that dynamic testing is becoming more prevelant but, a load test is the only way to evaluate settlement actual amounts of settlement.
Following is a typical statement for the ASTM rules:
The following list of standards is being balloted for withdraw without replacement. The Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees contain the following provision for
handling overdue standards, Section 10.6.3.1: "If no ballot action is in process to update the standard as of January 1 of the sixth year since its last approval date, a ballot for
withdrawal will be issued automatically by ASTM Headquarters. The overdue standard will be placed on the next available concurrent subcommittee and main committee ballot.
If the standard has not received a new approval date by December 31 of the eighth year since the last approval date, the standard will be withdrawn."
Based on this regulation, these standards are now being concurrently balloted for withdrawal without replacement.