Numerical and Experimental Study of the Indentation Hardness Test

摘要

The process of indentation hardness testing has been analyzed both experimentally and numerically. A set of indentation experiments has been performed for several materials with conical/pyramidal and spherical indenters. The large strain elastoplastic finite element program JAC has been used, with tensile stress-strain data as input, to model these tests as well as tests reported in the literature. Load-depth curves generated with our finite element model deviate less than 15% from experimental data (both our own as well as literature values) for both large scale (up to 250 mu m depth) and small scale (less than 5 mu m depth) indentation tests for all indenter geometries examined. Also, agreement between the model and micro-micro (less than 1 mu m) pyramid indentation data from the literature is quite good. These results suggest that load-depth response of indentation hardness tests can be successfully predicted with a continuum based finite element model. In addition, examination of the finite element results has suggested several corrections based on geometry which must be included when computing the hardness of near surface material. (ERA citation 11:001192)